


Through the bright mirror

by thepurplewombat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, HP: EWE, Hermione has Strong Feelings about Plans, Major Character Death but it doesn't take, canon-compliant until mid-Final Battle, not a time-turner fic, of sorts, the mirror of erised was not designed to be used like this, time travel fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2018-11-11 06:11:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11142528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: With the war lost and Death Eaters, led by a possessed Harry Potter, searching the castle for the last known Order member, Hermione, Professor Snape, and Dumbledore's portrait take a desperate last-minute gamble that might alter the course of history forever, and put a new leg on the Trousers of Time.





	1. Not another Dumbledore Special

**Author's Note:**

> So the other night as I was falling asleep, I had this image of Hermione - bloodstained and much too thin, wrapped in a robe that's entirely too big for her - diving into the Mirror of Erised and arriving in the middle of Snape's Worst Memory. She proceeded to hex the Maurauders, save Snape, and pull Dumbledore's beard.

Hermione ran through the halls of Hogwarts as though she were being chased by demons. Considering that she could hear Bellatrix’s mad cackle behind her, that wasn’t actually so far from true as she’d have liked it to be.

Her breath burned in her throat and every inch of her hurt – her back, she was fairly sure, hadn’t stopped bleeding since Not-Harry’s Sectumsempra had caught her from behind as she’d turned to flee. Running wasn’t much use – Hogwarts was only so big and they’d find her eventually, find her and kill her (also eventually, but she wasn’t thinking about that). Possibly she should run for the Astronomy Tower – falling was quick enough, she supposed, and if they were all in _here_ hunting her, they weren’t out _there_ waiting to catch her as she fell.

She heard Bella’s laugh behind her again and put on an extra burst of speed. She almost screamed when a pale hand reached out from behind a tapestry and yanked her into an alcove. Her back cried out as she was pressed against a wall, but she was silent, staring dumbfounded into the pitch-black eyes of the man who had his bloody hand pressed firmly over her mouth.

They remained still, barely breathing, as the Death Eaters (Bella and Not-Harry in the lead, laughing like loons, like this was a _game_ to them) thundered past. She stared up at Professor Snape as he cocked his head to listen, his black hair falling into his face. The wound on his throat was closed but still looked vicious, hardly better than when he’d lain on the floor of the Shrieking Shack hours ago, gasping Harry’s name as her best friend stepped over his body to follow Voldemort. She’d wanted to stop, wanted to help the man she’d always suspected wasn’t what anyone thought, but Harry had been going to his death and really, there had been nothing she could do.

“If I release you,” he murmured into her ear, “are you going to scream?”

She shook her head as best she could, and he took his hand away, only to clasp it around her wrist.

“With me, Miss Granger,” he said, and strode deeper into what turned out to be a small, dark tunnel. She limped after him as best she could, her burning legs turning uncooperative now that there wasn’t the threat of immediate death to motivate them.

“Phoenix tears?” she asked eventually, her voice as soft as she could make it. She desperately didn’t want to be heard.

“Unicorn blood, I’m afraid,” he said mildly. “I expect the madness will take a day or two to set in. Now come along, girl, we haven’t much time.”

So she kept her _oh, God_ quiet and followed, drinking in the fact that her only ally (was he an ally? He’d put his body between her and a werewolf once, and every other person on her side was dead – he was what she had) was going to go mad in a matter of days, sinking into the cursed half-life of those who drank the blood of unicorns.

Eventually he stopped in front of a door, murmured a few words, and stepped through, pulling her through behind him and into the Headmaster’s office. It looked just like it had when Dumbledore was alive, but for the addition of a twinkly-eyed portrait behind the wide desk. There was no twinkle in Dumbledore’s eyes now – he looked old, and sad, and defeated.

“I’ve brought the girl, Dumbledore,” Professor Snape said, releasing her. She sank into one of the squashy armchairs, stifling a whimper. “I wasn’t able to see exactly what happened, but she was there. Miss Granger, can you report?”

“A-are we safe here?” she asked, looking around. The door they’d come through had vanished, but there was still the big main entrance, and she shifted to keep it in view, her fingers tight around her wand. She pulled up her legs so she could rest her arm on them, pointing her wand at the door.

“For the moment, yes. It will take even…even him a long time to break the wards on this office. Now, report!”

She kept her eyes on the door anyway, and her shaky wand-hand as ready as it could be.

“Did you see the duel, sir? Between Harry and…and _him_?” Professor Snape shook his head, and so that was where she started – the moment where Harry had stepped out of the castle to face Voldemort, wand at the ready. The duel had been short and she vaguely remembered screaming as Harry fell. The relief – the relief when he’d stood up again, miraculously survived _Avada_ a second time, had been…well, short-lived for one thing.

“He picked up his wand and pointed it at…at Tom. And it seemed as though he sort of…I don’t know how to explain it sir, but it looked as though You-Know-Who _dissolved_. And he went into the wand, and Harry…Harry laughed. He laughed and laughed, and said  ‘Yes, this will do very nicely.’ And then Ron and Professor McGonagall went to him, and…” She drew a sharp breath. There hadn’t really been time to think of it before, but now…But Professor Snape was watching her expectantly – she could see his unmoving form seated in the other armchair, just out of the corner of her eye, and he had his arms crossed as though he was watching her brew a complicated potion. “And Harry…Harry hugged them. And then he, he, he put his _hand_ , his hand into- into Professor McGonagall’s chest, and he pulled out her h-heart, and he held it up and laughed and laughed and l- _laughed_ , sir, and he took Ron by the throat and he- and then the Death Eaters started killing, they were killing _everyone_ , sir, and Harry looked at me, but it wasn’t – it wasn’t Harry anymore, and he raised his wand…and I ran. I’m sorry, I should have…I should have stayed, I could have…I should have…”

“If you’d stayed,” Dumbledore’s portrait said quietly, but it came from a distance, over her gasping breaths which were on the verge of turning into sobs. “You would have been dead. As it is, we may yet be able to…salvage something. Severus, do you think you could provide Miss Granger with a calming draught? We have a great deal to do tonight.”

A moment later his hand appeared before Hermione’s face, a small bottle dangling between his fingers. She didn’t hesitate to toss back the dose, and shuddered as the artificial calm settled over her, steadying her breathing, stopping her tears. Professor Snape was kneeling before her, studying her face.

“Are you calm, Miss Granger?” he asked finally, and she nodded. “Very well. Tell me, what do you know about the Mirror of Erised?”

She frowned, distantly aware that this was a strange question – or at least a strange time to be asking the question.

“It shows you your greatest desire, sir. The thing you want most in the world.”

“It can also, or so it is believed, be used as a form of time travel. If someone were to enter the Mirror, thinking of a particular moment in time, they would be able to enter that moment and change history.”

“But you can’t…oh. It would…split off. An alternate history. A new leg in the Trousers of Time.” She almost thought she saw a smile on Professor Snape’s thin face.

“Indeed, Miss Granger. As it happens, we have access to the Mirror. If you were to go back several hours, Professor Dumbledore believes that you may be able to pass Potter the information he needs to turn the tide.” He didn’t look as though _he_ believed it.

For that matter, Hermione wasn’t sure if she believed it. There were at least ten practical reasons she could think of why it wouldn’t. First of all being-

“This sounds like a Dumbledore Special, sir,” she said, looking at Snape, who reared back, startled, and almost choked.

“And what do you mean by that, Miss Granger?” he asked in a silky, dangerous voice.

“Badly thought out, sir. Dependent on luck. Completely ignoring the human factor.” She pushed herself to her feet and began to pace. “With all due respect to Professor Dumbledore, sir, he wasn’t particularly good at planning things. I’m guessing that you have some information that Harry was supposed to have received before the battle?”

Snape nodded slowly, watching her.

“And while I’m guessing, I’m also guessing that the incident on the Astronomy Tower last year wasn’t exactly what it looked like? Yeah, I thought not. Now, if you would, Professor Dumbledore, I would like to know why you entrusted information vital to the war effort to someone who wouldn’t be trusted by anyone in the Order? How was Professor Snape supposed to pass on the information? Was this supposed to be before or after Harry killed him to gain mastery of the Elder Wand?”

“I think I may have given you too much of that calming draught,” Snape murmured. “Miss Granger, do you realise that you are speaking to-“

“The man whose wishy-washy ‘let’s all hope everything turns out okay, the universe won’t let us die because we’re such lovable little scamps’ plans have gotten literally everyone I ever loved killed? I know exactly who I’m talking to, Professor. And this plan – which completely ignores the fact that I was with Harry up until the moment before he stepped out of the Great Hall, so he wouldn’t believe a second me if I showed up, the fact that there was a battle on and I would have to _find_ him in the middle of all that in order to convince someone he would, quite frankly, be incredibly stupid to trust…this is a Dumbledore Special. It won’t work.”

Professor Snape scowled. The portrait looked too surprised to react – probably nobody had ever spoken so to him before.

“And what would you suggest, Miss Granger? That we flee and allow the Dark Lord to expand his reign across the wizarding and Muggle worlds while we hide away and weep and cower and lick our wounds?”

She shook her head slowly. An idea was beginning to fizz in the back of her brain. It was mad, of course. She focussed inward, waiting for the idea to come together, standing in front of the fireplace in Dumbledore’s office, watching her own mind at work.

“…Miss Granger? Miss _Granger_!”

“Hush,” she said vaguely. “Thinking.” His face twisted in something like shock – she could understand, she’d never spoken so to a teacher before in her life. But then, he wasn’t exactly a teacher, she wasn’t exactly a student, and Hogwarts was more like a battlefield than a school now. “I think…I think I know what we can do. Go big or go home. Don’t just change _now_ , change _everything_.”

She reached for her beaded bag and dug through it one-handed until her hand closed around the smooth orb. Professor Snape stared at it.

“Is that…”

“An Arithmantic orb, yes sir. I’ve been running the numbers since fourth year, sir, let me just…” She twisted it, and a complex skein of light appeared between them. Threads of various colours, twisting and bending… “I know they say Arithmancy’s useless, sir, because what use is divination that only works backwards, but…look. I’ve entered everyone, I even managed to get a hair of yours, sir, and a few months ago I was able to add some of Tom’s…soul gunk, from the Horcruxes, to the working. It’s as accurate as I can make it.”

“I’m looking, Miss Granger, but I’m not sure what I should be seeing.” He seemed intrigued, which was good. “I’m afraid I didn’t take Arithmancy beyond what I needed for my Potions Mastery. It is, as you say, a singularly useless discipline.”

Hermione set the orb down on a table and expanded the working until every strand was as thick as her finger, stretching almost from one end of the office to the other. It was really a beautiful working, except for the pustulent scarlet thread that ran through it, throbbing with malevolent light. It had begun as a theoretical exercise, and had become a form of self-torture, taunting herself with all the ways things _could_ have gone, if they had made slightly different decisions. If they had not gone to the Ministry, Sirius’ slightly-faded thread ran with Harry’s until the end of the working, twining around and strengthening the red-and-gold.

“It’s not actually as useless as people think, sir. But in this case I want to use this equation to find the optimum moment to change the past for maximum effect. If we can find the right moment, I think we can…well, that depends on when the right moment is. We might be able to prevent his return, at least, or…well. We probably won’t be able to stop the first war, but…This is Tom, sir. See, this indicates that he continues back into the past before the working was started. I didn’t have enough data to work him back before the 1970s. See here?” She hobbled to the other end of the equation. “This is now. Let me just…” she snatched a quill and some parchment from the desk and began entering the data of the day, reducing her losses to numbers, to figures to feed into the working. Professor Snape hovered over her shoulder, scowling. “Professor, I realise that you’re a great believer in better learning through intimidation, but I’m really not used to doing Arithmancy with you hovering over me. Could you…sit down? I really need to concentrate.”

Professor Snape stepped back, and she was vaguely aware that he was watching her work with an eagle eye. Suddenly he stepped up beside her again, a potion in his hand. She took it without stopping and knocked it back.

“Blood replenisher,” he said. “Will it interfere with your work if I do some minor healing on you, Miss Granger? I am…concerned about the amount of blood you’re tracking over the floor.”

Hermione nodded vaguely, muttering the charm to enter the data into the spell form. Almost immediately, several lines of light that had been flickering at the end of the dataset stopped as the spell matrix became aware that their subjects had died. Harry’s scarlet-and-gold thread did not wink out as such, just united with Voldemort’s, making the glowing red thread even stronger, while those of the Death Eaters twined around the doubled strand like DNA. Of the relevant people on the Side of Light, only herself and Professor Snape remained, and the matrix looked quite confused about Professor Snape. Probably quantifying the effect of the unicorn was taxing the calculations, but before the Shrieking Shack incident his silvery-gray thread continued to twist through the web of light. It stayed steady for almost two decades, running close next to the bright blue thread that represented Dumbledore. Earlier than that, his line was more jagged, running in tandem with Voldemort’s for several years before veering off sharply. The man himself was muttering healing charms from behind her, and slowly, slowly, her body began to feel slightly less pained.

“Thank you, Professor,” she said absently. “I’m going to try and find the nexi now, sir. They indicate where history could have changed.” It wasn’t quite that simple, but if the man had only ever used the art to work out what had gone wrong with a potion, she wasn’t about to try and explain something she’d spent three years throwing her soul into. Suddenly she had a decent idea how he felt faced with a student who hadn’t studied. Well, she’d always known that, with best friends like…like Ron and Harry.

Her hands as steady as she could make them, Hermione worked the spell that would show her the vital moments, the moments where history could be changed. The matrix lit up like a Christmas tree, like Paris at night, as every moment that could affect the course of the working lit up, and a thousand branches sprang up, many only slightly different from the true course. Carefully, carefully, she pruned away the excess, starting with the completely irrelevant ones that created timelines only slightly off from true, then pruning away those that had Voldemort triumph sooner than he had. Hermione loved Arithmancy, she really did, but there was something slightly cruel about a discipline of magic that was almost entirely made up of _could-have-been_. It was, as Professor Snape had said, mainly useful for working out why a spell or a potion had failed, and how to prevent it.

Eventually, after so long that Hermione was swaying on her feet and Professor Snape had taken up hovering at her side, ready (she assumed) to catch her if she fainted, she stepped back. The working had been pruned to the best of her ability, leaving behind something that looked almost like a neural map, blinking and shimmering in the air above the table. At six places on the true branch, bright golden lights flickered, and from there the matrix branched. All of them had Voldemort’s line stopping well before the end of the working, leaving a healthy matrix without a trace of the Dark Lord.

“Well,” she breathed. “Will you look at that.”

Professor Snape was looking at the working with something like awe.

“Dear God,” Dumbledore murmured from his portrait. “I’ve never seen a working this complex before.”

“Professor Vector helped a lot with some of the initial calculations,” Hermione said. “But after that I just kept feeding it data as things happened, to keep it up to date. It seemed important somehow. And now it’s…well, I don’t think anyone’s ever tried something like this on this scale, sir. I’ve got thirty people’s magical signatures tied into it, and I’ve been feeding it every scrap of information I could get my hands on so that it could accurately backtrace the events. These six points,” she gestured at the nexi and gasped as her legs went out from under her, but Professor Snape caught her by the elbow and guided her into a chair. “These six points are where we can jerk the timeline into a new course, one where, where the Dark Lord dies much earlier.”

Professor Snape reached out to one of the nexi, almost-but-not-quite touching it. It was one of the earlier ones, and she didn’t like looking at it, although it did have Voldemort die quite early on, with no massive battle to create casualties.

“This one says that if we kill Potter before he comes to Hogwarts, the Dark Lord…”

“He just fades away, sir. See how the red line goes thicker and thinner and then just sort of frays out? If I had to take a guess, he inhabits Horcrux after Horcrux until they’re all gone and then he just…runs out. He _needed_ Harry, in order to come fully back to life.” Hermione heaved herself back to her feet and shuffled over to him again, clutching at his arm to keep herself upright. He raised his eyebrow at her, but didn’t comment. “I don’t like it, though. I don’t think I could k-kill Harry.”

“Not even to save the wizarding world, Miss Granger?” Professor Dumbledore asked from his portrait.

Hermione shook her head.

“That’s what I mean by ignoring the human factor, Headmaster,” she said. “I know myself fairly well. Even if I could bring myself to kill Harry, and I think I could, I think I could even convince him to help me because of his saving people thing, I couldn’t kill a child. It’s not in me. And I don’t think Professor Snape could do it either.”

“If I asked it of him, he could,” Dumbledore said. Beside her, Professor Snape went absolutely rigid, but didn’t deny it.

“I don’t doubt that, sir,” Hermione said, and her voice was as cold as she could make it. “I think you’ve demonstrated quite well that Professor Snape will do anything you ask him to. But, once again, you’re not thinking it through. Professor Snape will go mad within days. How long will it take him to find and kill Harry? Will he even be able to kill him? Because I’ve been thinking about a number of things lately, and from what I can tell, Professor Snape has been protecting Harry with everything in him for the past seven years.”

“Brat didn’t exactly make it easy,” Professor Snape muttered. “But say you’re right, Miss Granger, what do you think that means?”

“If I had to take a guess – and you’d know better than me, sir, I’m not exactly an expert in unicorn blood poisoning – when you succumb…”

“You think that if I go mad while in the past, I’ll be hell-bent on protecting Potter, since that has been my overriding motivation since the first fall of the Dark Lord.” He turned his head to look up at the portrait. “The girl has a point, Dumbledore. This nexus is no good.”

“Severus…”

“We can test it,” Hermione said. “Let me just…Professor, if you could stand behind me, I need both hands and I’m not entirely sure I can stand on my own right now…”

“When was the last time you ate, Miss Granger?” he asked, even as he moved behind her, his hands on her ribs steadying her and keeping her upright.

“Not sure, sir. Okay now let me just…” With one gesture, Hermione froze and shrunk the matrix until it was nothing more than a glowing, sparking ball, and with the other hand she pulled a duplicate matrix from the ether. “Test matrix, sir. Don’t want to corrupt the data. Now, let’s just…”

She leaned forward and pinched the silvery line that was Severus Snape, detaching it from the present, and drew it back in an arc until it intersected the nexus. The effect was electric – the silvery-grey line became darkest black and twined with Harry’s red-and-gold, feeding into it until it pulsed wrist-thick, while around it, every single other line flickered out. Voldemort’s too, but…

“No,” she said. “The cost is too great. If you go back, sir, I’m pretty sure you’ll kill everyone in the wizarding world to keep Harry safe.”

Professor Snape was completely silent for a moment, then breathed something that may have been a laugh.

“Believe me, Miss Granger,” he said, “I’ve been tempted.”

“Yeah, me too,” she said. She reset the test matrix and stared at it. Then her hands flew without her permission, drawing Professor Snape’s line back to each nexus in turn. Each and every one of them resulted in disaster – while Voldemort died much more quickly in every case, the cost was astronomical. Which made sense, of course – sending a blood-mad wizard as strong as him back in time…it was a recipe for disaster. “Right, so you going back isn’t an option, sir. I mean, I sort of knew that, but now we’ve confirmed it.”

“Indeed. Of course, the Headmaster had always intended for you to be the one to go back,” he said drily.

“Confirmation is key, sir,” she said. Her legs wavered again and she almost fell, but Professor Snape hustled her back over to the chair and plopped her down with no ceremony.

“Miss Granger, I have one dose of Invigoration Draught with me, and I can’t leave the office to find or make more. Do you need it now, or will you be able to wait until later?”

“She needs to take the Draught before she goes through if she’s not to collapse unconscious before doing any good, Severus,” the portrait said, and she glared at it.

“As it happens, Professor Dumbledore has a point. Can you…we need to manipulate the matrix to see which nexus will give me the best result. How good are you at this, sir?”

She watched Professor Snape study the working, the intricate lines and webs of influence, alliance, and life. Eventually, he shook his head.

“Not good enough, Miss Granger. Not for a working on this scale. I have the power, but the finesse…it’s beyond me. You have to be the one to do it.”

She sighed. It wasn’t as though manipulating a working like this took a lot of magic, but she was running on empty. She’d have the power to do it, just about, but that and stand…no.

“You’ll have to hold me up, sir,” she said, and reached for him with shaking hands. To her surprise, he nodded and pulled her up, then turned and pulled until she was leaning against his chest facing the matrix, his arms wrapped firmly around her, keeping her upright enough to work the matrix. “Thank you, sir,” she murmured, and reached out for the spell-lines.

Her own thread was a warm amber colour, the same colour as her eyes, and felt alive in her hand as she pinched it away from its time. As she drew it back toward the first nexus, she paused.

“Professor Snape, sir?”

“Yes?”

“Have you noticed that aside from the nexus where Harry dies, every other nexus is on _your_ timeline?” It was actually quite intriguing. Every time Professor Snape changed allegiances, the entire course of the war warped with him. The silver-grey thread, pulsing with corruption in the last inches but clear and strong nonetheless, carried the course of the war along with it.

Professor Snape released her with one hand, reaching out with the other to trace his thread, and when she turned her head wearily, she saw something like wonder on his face. Did the man truly have no idea how vital he’d been to the war all along?

She cleared her throat.

“I want to try something,” she said. “Take me over to the beginning – see that first jag, the one where you go from neutral to Tom? Take me there.”

They did an awkward sideways shuffle, Hermione still pinching the end of her own timeline between forefinger and thumb, until they stood in front of the first change in Professor Snape’s allegiance. There was one close by but earlier, one that kicked his thread from the neutral-tending-Dark line it had been following and closer to the part of the matrix where Tom and his Death Eaters spiralled, but _this_ one, this was the first massive spike, the first time Severus Snape’s allegiance truly shifted. She reached out for the thread, stroking it with a gentle finger along the jag, and closed her eyes to see the impressions better.

“You lost something important to you,” she said. “It sent you to him. What did you lose?”

Sometimes Hermione thought she might be telepathic, because she could practically _hear_ Professor Snape’s reluctance in the silence that followed.

“When is this?” he asked.

“1976,” she said. “You’d have been…”

“Fifth year, yes.” He sounded thoughtful, quiet. “That was the year I lost Lily’s friendship.”

“Lily Potter, sir? Harry’s mum?”

“Yes. We were…friends, before Hogwarts. In fifth year, we had…a disagreement. She never spoke to me again.”

“Yes, I can see her veering off over there with James Potter and the others, and there you go, off to Voldemort. She…was she your only friend, sir?”

“She was.”

“What did you fight about?”

Professor Snape drew a deep breath.

“Miss Granger, I am not a fool. I am sure that Potter greatly enjoyed reliving the childhood humiliations he witnessed in my Penseive, but I have no wish-“

“Harry _looked in your Penseive_?” she demanded, her voice going shrill. “Without permission? Christ, I’m surprised he survived! Is _that_ why you stopped his Occlumency lessons?”

“Am I to understand that he never…”

“Told anyone? Well, if he did, he certainly never told _me_ , probably because he knew I’d have boxed his ears for him and made him apologize. Profusely. I’m sure he didn’t…mean any harm, though, sir. Well,” honesty compelled her to say, “no, I’m sure he didn’t _consciously_ mean any harm. He really didn’t like you, though. Now if you would, could you…explain the argument?”

He sighed, and she could feel the anger leaving his body where she leaned against him. He must have been nearly as tired as Hermione herself, but he was still keeping her upright.

“I was having an…altercation. With James Potter and Sirius Black. Potter had me upside down and was threatening to…expose me to the student body. Lilly stepped in, and I…”

Hermione sighed.

“You said something stupid, didn’t you.”

“I called her a Mudblood, Miss Granger. That goes well beyond merely stupid.”

“So she never spoke to you again because of something you said while you were hanging upside down in the air and taunted?” Hermione frowned. “Did you try to apologize?”

“Repeatedly,” he said drily. “She wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Hmm. She sounds like a bit of a cow, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I do mind you saying, Miss Granger. And if you wish me to help you further with this inanity, you will _keep your mouth off Lily Evans_. Are. We. Clear?”

 _Way to go, Hermione, badmouthing the man’s dead girlfriend_.

“As crystal, sir. Could you shift me a bit forward, I need to…ah, there.” He had to wrap his hand around her wrist to still her shaking hand enough to attach her lifeline to the nexus, but when it took…

“My God,” he breathed.

The change was…nothing short of spectacular. In an instant, the lines twisted around themselves. Professor Snape shifted all the way over to Dumbledore’s side, running parallel to Lily Evans’ spring-green. And the lines, oh the lines…there were still deaths. But…so few. So many fewer people died.

“Will you look at that,” she said. “Look at Pettigrew though, he openly goes Dark right out of school. And everyone…everyone lives. Sir, I don’t think we’re going to get a better outcome than that.”

“So,” he said eventually. “All you have to do is go back in time, reconcile me with Lily, and prevent me from joining the Dark Lord.”

“Yep,” she said. “Sounds simple, doesn’t it?”

A moment later, an alarm began to scream in her ears. She turned in Professor Snape’s grasp to look at him, but didn’t need his quiet nod to know what was happening. Those were his ward alarms, warning him that they were being tampered with.

Someone was at the door.


	2. Moriturus te salutat

Severus glared at the door and silenced the alarms, then looked at Granger. She looked like hell, splashed and splattered with blood and covered in bruises. Even her clothes looked like they’d been through the wars (well, hadn’t they?) and the dark circles under her eyes rivalled his own. He set her down on the armchair and stuffed the Invigoration Draught in her hand.

“Drink that,” he ordered. “I’m going to get the Mirror.”

She nodded, her thin face almost blank with fear, and swallowed the draught as he rushed across the office to the cupboard that concealed the Mirror of Erised.

“Severus, are you sure this is a good plan?” Dumbledore’s portrait asked quietly.

“Do you think I’m turning selfish, then, Dumbledore?” he snapped as he wrenched the man-high mirror from the cupboard. “That I’d risk everything to save my own hide?”

“Not yours, perhaps,” Dumbledore said. “But Lily? Perhaps. The good of the many is more important than the good of the one, Severus.”

“In this case,” the girl said quietly, “the good of the many _is_ the good of the one. The equations are clear. If we stop Professor Snape from joining the Death Eaters, the world changes. It’s the best possible plan.”

Severus hesitated. The best plan, or the best plan _for him_? When he turned, she was there, catching his arm in her thin-fingered grip. She looked like she was running on the ragged edge of exhaustion.

“Don’t let him talk you out of this, sir. This isn’t Gryffindor sentimentality. This is the plan with the best potential outcome for the largest number of people. The fact that you’re one of the people who could have a better outcome doesn’t negate the fact that everyone else will have a better outcome as well.”

Damn the girl. She saw too much. But there, over her shoulder, was the Arithmantic matrix, the most complex he’d ever seen (because nobody bothered with large-scale workings, not when nothing could be done to change what it showed), the lines clear as day. It wasn’t a guarantee, not even close. But it was a _chance_. A chance to defeat the Dark Lord, a chance to save Lily – or a version of Lily. Even, perhaps, a chance for some version of him to…something. Something better.

Anything was better than _this_ , hiding in a dead man’s office with the Dark Lord’s minions pounding at the door.

“I agree, Miss Granger,” he said.

Her look of relief was profound, and her smile lit up her thin face like a nova. A moment later her face twisted up in a troubled frown.

“I need…forgive me, sir. I need the memory. So that I can focus on the time…”

“Of course,” he said. “I can pass it on through Legilimency…in fact…I can pass you _all_ my memories. They may be of some help, and as I don’t expect to live long after you go back, they will be of no use to me.”

He waited impatiently as she considered it.

“Yes, I think…I think that they could come in useful. Any memories you harvested from Harry during your tutoring sessions last year would also be a help. I may…I may have a plan for how to convince everyone.”

“Pensieves can’t be tampered with. It’s not a bad plan,” he said. “Are you ready, Miss Granger? Look into my eyes.”

She met his eyes without fear, and he cupped her face in both hands as he entered her mind. She welcomed him, bathing him in trust like nothing he’d ever seen before. In the mental construct of her mind (to his complete lack of surprise, it was a library) she indicated a room just off the main.

 _In there_ , she said. _Will it hurt_?

 _Probably_ , he replied, and began. He didn’t cull anything. There was no time for finesse or carefully selecting memories to give her, so he just _shoved_ everything into the room. Every thought and sensation and memory from the past four decades, rushing past his view and into her mind. After one year, her mind began to scream. After five, she was screaming aloud, but still keeping her mind open to him, still accepting the memories. Ten, and she began to bleed from her ears, but she screamed at him to keep going. Fifteen, and the whites of her eyes began to bleed, scarlet tears streaking down her dirty face.

When it was done, she bent at the waist and puked all over his shoes.

“God,” she breathed hoarsely. She looked up at him, and from what he could see of her expression, with the bloody eyes and the blood-streaked skin, she looked somewhere between furious and horrified. “What a fucking life.”

“Indeed, Miss Granger.” He passed her a bottle of whiskey to rinse her mouth, and she grinned at him, looking more than a little mad. He picked up the orb with the working, twisted it off, and handed it over for her to stuff in her bag. Time was short – the Dark Lord was at the second level of the wards.

“On the other hand, I know more about Potions than I ever thought I would. Also wine. I might even develop a taste for it.” She looked past him at the mirror. “So, do I just…jump through?”

“That seems to be how it’s done,” he replied. “In theory. It has only been done successfully twice, we believe, and in both cases the Mirror was destroyed. Nobody is entirely sure that it worked, but…we seem to be out of options. There is no way to escape here alive.”

She glanced down at her arms, bared by her shirt, and at the (glass) mirror, and set her chin. Severus pulled off his robe and threw it over her shoulders and then, on impulse, wrapped her hand around his wand. He wasn’t going to need it, soon enough. The Dark Lord had breached the fourth wards, and would be here soon. Severus didn’t expect to survive, but he would take one hell of an honour guard with him.

“I am not Albus Dumbledore, Miss Granger,” he said. “I don’t have a sword for you, or a talking hat. Just…”

“A headful of bad memories, a cloak, and a wand? It’ll do, sir,” she said, and smiled. Then, to his utter surprise, she wrapped her arms around him in a rib-cracking hug. She was much too thin, a skeleton covered in skin, but he hugged her back anyway, because she was about to leave behind the dead bodies of all she had known and loved, to try and alter _his_ path in life. If the stupid girl thought a hug from her least favourite teacher would make that easier, who was he to deny her?

When she stepped back, she smiled up at him.

“You’ll never know if I succeed, will you?” she said.

“I don’t expect to, no,” he said quietly. “Wrap the robe around your arms, you’ll be no use if you get your wrists slit on the mirror.”

She nodded seriously and fastened the robe over her clothes, wrapping her arms in the too-long black wool, then turned to face the mirror. Severus saw them both reflected there, and – another impulse he didn’t quite understand – bowed to her.

“ _Moriturus te salutat_ , Miss Granger,” he said, and turned to face the door.

He heard a deep breath and running footsteps, and then the shattering of glass even as the door collapsed inward.

Severus Snape laughed and laughed and laughed, and as he laughed, Fiendfyre streamed from his upraised hands, engulfing him, the office, and the shattered remains of the Mirror of Erised in living, dancing flame.


	3. Out of Nowhere

If someone had asked Severus what his day would be like, he’d probably have said something about taking his Defense OWL, hanging out with Lily, dodging stupid Potter and his stupid friends, et cetera. His plans for the day had certainly not included being hung upside-down using his own _fucking_ spell and humiliated in front of his only friend at this hell-school.

He was just hanging there, contemplating the utter shittiness of his existence and awaiting further shittiness, and watching Lily storm off angrily, when there was a strange sound. The sound was something like breaking glass and something like the crack of Apparition, but mostly it was like a scream, dopplering closer and closer until it collided with him with more force than a sound generally had, breaking the spell and dumping him on the ground.

He landed on top of what felt like a coat rack but turned out to be a girl. A girl with a cloud of messy brown hair and a face that, from what he could see, was almost entirely covered in blood.

Severus scrambled to his feet, pulling the girl with him. She was staring at him with wide dark eyes set in bloody whites, and he could see red tear-tracks on her face. She was bleeding from a long cut on her forehead (although some of the blood looked old, merciful Merlin, what had _happened_ to her?) and clutched at him with both hands.

“Are you alright?” he asked, dusting grass off the much-too-big black robe she was wearing. She made a soft noise of pain when he touched her shoulder, and only the hint of a wince, but that was enough for Severus to know that whoever she was, and wherever she’d come from, she was pretty far from alright. “Shall I take you to Madam Pomfrey?”

“A-“ she stopped and cleared her throat. “Are you Severus Snape?”

Cautiously, he nodded.

The strange girl burst out in tears and flung both arms around him, almost taking them both down. She was chanting _oh my God it worked, it worked, it worked_ through her tears and clutching him like he was a lifeline. For his part, Severus kept both hands carefully away from her and looked helplessly over her head.

His eyes met Lily’s. She must have stopped and come back when the girl had appeared, because she was just standing there, staring, not even giving stupid Potter filthy looks or anything. Eventually, his pleading expression and the girl’s tears must have softened something in her, because with a sigh, she stepped forward and reached out to touch the girl’s shoulder. Severus’ hand shot out and he caught her wrist before she could.

“I think she’s hurt, Lily,” he said softly, and Lily nodded and reached instead for the girl’s arm (filthy, but not visibly damaged except for a few long scratches) and gently lowered it so she could see the girl’s face.

“Are you okay?” Lily asked.

The girl turned her head to look at Lily, keeping hold of Severus with her other hand.

“I- I think my calming draught has worn off,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m just…we didn’t really think it would work, you know. I mean, we both pretended that we did, but I didn’t, not really, and he didn’t either, and…I’m sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I? I tend to do that.”

Lily nodded.

“I can understand that. Now, let’s get you inside, okay?”

She took the girl by the elbow, and Severus took her other arm (stick-thin; she was skinnier than he’d ever been, and smelled of blood and ash and the sickly-sweet rotting-fruit smell of advanced ketosis) and they began moving toward the castle at a snail’s pace. Lily looked over her shoulder at stupid Potter and his stupid friends, who’d been standing uselessly, staring at this unscheduled interruption to their favourite hobby of making Severus’ life hell.

“James, get Professor McGonagall. Remus, you fetch Madam Pomfrey.”

Stupid Potter dashed off with his (werewolf werewolf _werewolf_ ) friend in tow, leaving Black and Pettigrew to annoy Severus. Black, the eternal showoff, moved in front of them and flipped his stupid hair, walking backward so he could stare like the mannerless ingrate he was.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Sirius Black.”

“I know who you are,” she said quietly, shuffling along like someone who is really too tired to keep moving. “The last time I saw you, you were falling through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. Harry cried and cried, and he was so angry I was afraid he was going to do something stupid.”

Black, Lily and Severus exchanged looks over her head.

“Let’s just…keep moving, shall we?” Lily said, and the girl nodded.

They’d gotten about halfway to the castle when Potter returned, trailing Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey.

“What is going _on_ here?” Professor McGonagall asked in her sharp, bossy voice.

Said sharp voice seemed to have an immediate effect on the girl, who went absolutely rigid between Lily and Severus, and stared at McGonagall, white-faced and huge-eyed.

She moved out of their gentle hold on her arms as though they were less solid than air, moving like a woman in a dream.

“P-professor McGonagall?” she asked when she reached her.

“I am Professor McGonagall, yes,” McGonagall said. The girl reached out and touched the edge of the professor’s robe. She shuddered visibly and then, suddenly, pressed her hand against McGonagall’s chest.

“Oh God,” she breathed. “Oh, God, you’re real, you’re alive, you’re whole, oh God you’re alive.” And she began to cry again, crumbling to the ground with both hands in front of her face while McGonagall stared at her, her eyebrows almost at her hairline.

“Miss…” she looked at Severus and Lily, who shrugged. “Who _are_ you? And how did you get here?”

Something in McGonagall’s tone – it was her Explain Yourself voice, which worked even on Severus, yanked the girl back from the edge of hysteria, and she stared up at the Deputy Headmistress.

“My name is Hermione Granger,” she said. “I’m sorry, I thought I was prepared, but to _see_ you here, alive, and…alive…I was just surprised. I am…I was…I will have been? Yes, that sounds…that sounds okay. I _will have been_ a student here. Can we…I need to talk to you, Professor. And them too,” her gesture took in Severus, Lilly, and stupid Potter and his stupid friends. “Also I think I’m going to need more calming draught or I’m going to go completely hysterical.” She seemed quite close enough to it already, and clearly Madam Pomfrey agreed, because she didn’t say a word as she produced a draught and handed it to the girl.

She knocked it back and shivered, breathing out long and slow, and Severus wondered again just what this girl, kneeling on the ground in front of McGonagall in her ragged black robe and Muggle clothing, smelling of a battlefield and looking like a famine victim, had _been_ through.

“Severus?” she asked. “Could you…could you help me up?”

Potter and Black both reached for her, but she shuddered out of their reach and allowed Severus and Lily to help her to her feet and support her with their hands under her elbow.

“You need to go to the hospital wing,” Pomfrey said, looking the girl over with an expression Severus was all too familiar with.

“I’m fine, for the moment, Madam Pomfrey. If I could just…I need to talk to you all. It’s very important, and I…Professor Dumbledore can’t know I’m here.”

McGonagall and Pomfrey both looked at her sharply, suddenly suspicious, and she flinched away from their expressions.

“I’m not…look, I’ll give you my-my wands, okay? I don’t want to hurt anyone, I came here to help, but he…he always thinks he knows what’s best. Please? Please, will you trust me, just until you’ve heard what I have to say, and then you can…you can involve him. If you think it wise.” She produced two wands from a pocket inside the robe and handed them over the McGonagall, who sighed and nodded.

“I think we’ll go to my quarters, then. Poppy, perhaps you can run some diagnostics while Miss…Granger explains herself?”

Madam Pomfrey didn’t look pleased, but she agreed anyway, and they trooped up to the castle, McGonagall in the lead, Severus and Lily supporting the girl – Hermione Granger – between them.


	4. Storytime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's quite a bit of talking in this chapter - and quite a bit of talking still to come. There will be more action eventually, but Hermione has a great deal of explaining to do first.
> 
> At some point someone is going to have to nick Dumbledore's Penseive. Won't that be fun.
> 
> Enjoy!

By the time they reached Professor McGonagall’s (Professor McGonagall, who was alive, and it really shouldn’t have been such a shock but it was, _oh it was_ ) private quarters, Hermione was pretty sure that Professor Snape’s Invigoration Draught had been faulty. Either that or the weight of her exhaustion – when was the last time she’d slept? She couldn’t even remember – had simply overcome it. Either way, it was with a sigh of exhaustion that she allowed this strange young version of her Potions Master (she had to stop herself from referring to him as Baby Snape) to pour her into an armchair. She pulled her legs up and curled up in the robe, and watched as Professor McGonagall conjured seats for everyone and Madam Pomfrey began to cast diagnostic spells over Hermione’s head. From what little she could see of them, they didn’t look very good. She wasn’t surprised. Her head felt as though it was about to burst, throbbing with the combined effect of exhaustion and the press of Professor Snape’s memories, and that was just her _head_.

“Now,” Professor McGonagall said once everyone was seated (so strange, Sirius young and alive, and Remus without any grey, and Pettigrew – oh _shit). “_ Suppose you tell us what it is that brings you here, Miss Granger?”

Hermione froze and stared. She couldn’t tell all she knew, not in front of someone she _knew_ was going to carry every word to Voldemort.

She reached up and yanked at Madam Pomfrey’s sleeve, and the woman – bless her – bent over to put her ear next to Hermione’s mouth.

“I can’t talk while Peter Pettigrew is here,” she whispered, as softly as she could. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize him, he _can’t_ be here.”

Madam Pomfrey shot her a sharp glance and straightened up.

“Peter, dear, could you go to the Infirmary and get me the potions on this list, please?” She conjured a parchment covered in scribbles and handed it over to Peter, who scurried from the room with an air of delighted importance that reminded Hermione wistfully of Percy Weasley. As soon as he was gone, Madam Pomfrey cast a silencing and locking spell on the door.

“Thank you, Madam Pomfrey,” Hermione said.

“You have half an hour at most before he gets back, Miss Granger, and I wouldn’t lay odds on your being awake five minutes after that, so you’d best get on with it.”

Hermione nodded and took a deep, calming breath.

“I’m from the future,” she said, and watched everyone around her freeze in shock. “Or perhaps I should say _a_ future. Not your future, not anymore, not exactly…it’s sort of complicated to explain, but…”

“Don’t tell us anything more, Miss Granger,” Professor McGonagall said sternly. “Meddling with the future is dangerous!”

“Professor, believe me, I know. But this was our last hope, don’t you see? By the time I left, practically everyone in this room was dead, and Voldemort had _won_. Eight hours ago, Professor, I stood in front of the doors of Hogwarts and watched as he possessed my best friend and _tore out your heart_. Dumbledore was dead. You were dead. The Weasleys, all dead. _Everyone_ , Professor. Except me, and…and one other person. This was our last hope – not for our timeline, but we could create a _new_ branch, we called it a new leg for the Trousers of Time, where we could…save. Something. Anything at all. Because where I’m from, there’s nothing left to save.”

Professor McGonagall sat back, white-faced, and stared.

“When are you from?” James Potter asked suddenly, sitting forward, his eyes bright behind his glasses. Hermione forced herself to look at him, at the face so much like one she’d seen laughing and mad as Harry hunted her through the halls of Hogwarts. She found that she couldn’t look straight at any of the Maurauders for more than a moment – James looked too much like Harry, Sirius threatened to break her heart with the contrast between the bright, beautiful boy he was and the ruin he’d become, and Remus…Remus she’d last seen lying next to Tonks, his throat a gaping, bloody ruin.

“Twenty-two years from now,” she said quietly. “A few years from now, everyone will think Voldemort-“

“We don’t speak that name,” Sirius said sharply.

“Has it got a Trace on it?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at him. “Is it going to bring a team of Snatchers to come and torture me? Are there Death Eaters here whose Dark Marks will burn at the sound of it?”

James and Sirius both looked at Severus, who scowled. His scowl would improve with age, she decided, because it wasn’t nearly as fearsome as it would become.

“No,” James admitted eventually.

“Then I think I’ll call him what I like, thank you ever so much. And when you’ve been face to face with him as many times as I have, then you can have an opinion on what name I use for him. Agreed?” There was silence, and she continued. “A few years from now everyone will think he’s been defeated, but then eleven years later he started coming back-“

“Miss Granger,” Professor McGonagall said suddenly. “I agree that I need to know your information. But why involve these students? And why not take the information to Professor Dumbledore?”

Hermione took a moment to think about it before replying.

“They’re here because, other than you, they’re some of the only people at Hogwarts today that I _know_ can be trusted,” she said. “As for the other…I’m not bringing my information to the Headmaster because he…well, he doesn’t place an appropriate value on individual human lives. Especially not when those lives belong to Slytherins. As was amply demonstrated a few months ago in this timeline, when Sirius Black tried to _murder_ a fellow student and was given nothing more than a detention for it. That isn’t the only reason – I’d like to show you my memories at some point, so you can see the path we need to avoid more clearly, but this one is actually relevant now. Simply, Professor, I don’t _trust_ the Headmaster. Not anymore, not ever again.”

There was a brief flurry of reaction. McGonagall looked shocked and confused, the Maurauders, to a man, looked angry, Lily looked shaken and Severus…Severus looked terrified.

“I didn’t tell!” he cried. “I swear I didn’t say a word to anyone about it!”

“It was just a prank!” James said. “Just a stupid prank!”

“You call sending Severus to the Shrieking Shack on the full a prank, James?” Hermione snapped. “He could have _died_. And Remus would have been sent to Azkaban! Severus was _this fucking close_ to being turned or killed!”

“Miss Granger,” Professor McGonagall said eventually. “I think you had better explain. I was not aware of this incident.”

Severus stared at her.

“You weren’t? But Dumbedore said…”

“I think he lied, Severus,” Hermione said gently. “Professor McGonagall, I have…I have the memories of that night. Would you like to see them? I can Legilimise them to you, if you like. They’re quite important and I would have had to show them to you anyway, and now is as good a time as any.”

“You have _my_ memories?” Severus demanded. “Where did you get them?”

“You gave them to me, just before I left,” Hermione told him. “You were the other survivor, Severus.”

“If you’re confident about your abilities, Miss Granger,” Professor McGonagall said, “I will allow you to show me the memories.”

“Oh, I’m fairly confident, Professor. I’ve got Professor Snape in my head, after all.”

Severus was still sputtering about that comment when Hermione met McGonagall’s eyes and slipped into her mind like water.

The memory was easy enough to find, even among the chaos of Professor Snape’s entire store of memories, and she played it for McGonagall. It was really quite impressive, the full moon, the werewolf, the great stag herding Severus away. And then…the infirmary, the tall and terrifying old man standing in a stripe of silvery moonlight, his blue eyes hard and cold and flat, standing over a shaking figure on a hospital bed.

_“If you tell anyone,” Dumbledore had said, “you will be expelled. All the professors have been made aware of the situation. If you speak of this, I will know. Do you understand, Mr Snape?”_

McGonagall closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her forehead. When she had gathered herself, she looked at Severus. There were tears in her eyes.

“Mr Snape…Severus. My dear boy, I had no idea. None at all. That such a thing should happen at Hogwarts! That the Headmaster…Severus, can you ever forgive me?”

Severus, huddled on his chair as though he was on the brink of fleeing, looked startled.

“Wasn’t your fault, Professor,” he muttered. “I don’t blame you.”

“It was my fault, because I am Head of Gryffindor, and therefore _my students_ were responsible for this…atrocity. Mister Potter, Mister Black, I hope you’ve enjoyed your free time, because you shall have none whatsoever until the day you graduate. And you might as well hand in your brooms now, because you have been banned from Quidditch as well.”

James and Sirius clearly knew the signs of McGonagall in an expelling mood as well as Hermione did, because they said not a word. After a moment of silence, though, Severus shifted in his chair.

“Professor McGonagall?” he said, with an air of _I can’t believe I’m doing this_ about him, “I don’t…I don’t think Potter knew about the thing. He seemed…very upset.”

“I didn’t,” James said uncomfortably. “Know, I mean, I didn’t know. But…I should have come to you, Professor. Granger’s right, Sniv – _Snape_ could have died. I’ll take my punishment.”

Sirius stirred for the first time since Professor McGonagall had apologised to Severus. His face was twisted up in a thoughtful frown, and he sat forward with his arms crossed. Remus, sitting next to him on the couch, looked at him curiously.

“When Professor Dumbledore finds out about the detentions, he’s going to know that someone talked. If he thinks it’s you,” he looked at Severus, “he’s going to expel you. I’ll tell him I went to Professor McGonagall. I didn’t…I don’t like you, but I don’t…I don’t want you dead. I didn’t think about that. Didn’t think about what could have happened to Moony, either. So I’ll go to Dumbledore when he gets back and tell him I couldn’t take the guilt, so I went to McGonagall.”

Hermione stared at him blankly. It felt as though she’d fallen into parallel universe. Sirius shifted defensively and glared at her.

“What?” he demanded.

“Sorry, it’s just…you never apologised. Where I’m from. You never…I’m just a bit surprised, is all. I’m very proud of you, Sirius.”

Sirius blushed, and Hermione jumped as Madam Pomfrey laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Peter will be back soon, Miss Granger,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you could explain why you wanted him sent away? And then I really must insist on a bath, something to eat, and some sleep.”

“I…oh. Oh.” She looked at the people in the room, at the Maurauders. So young. Still innocent, even, far more innocent than she and Harry and Ron had been at their age. They’d never seen death, never… “Oh. Um. In my…where I come from, Peter Pettigrew was a spy for Voldemort. He got – “ she let her eyes skate over James and Lily, “he got a lot of people killed, and then later he was…instrumental in his return. You can’t tell him anything about what I’ve told you here.”

“ _Peter_?” James said, sitting up straight. “Peter went to…him? I don’t believe it.”

“You didn’t believe it in my time either, but you didn’t live long enough to see any proof. I don’t care if you believe me, James, you _cannot_ tell him anything about what I’ve told you!”

“If we’re going to accept that she’s come from the future,” Lily spoke for the first time, “we have to accept that she know things we don’t. That’s sort of the point, isn’t it?”

James nodded slowly.

“I guess you have a point, Evans. Okay, we’ll tell him…”

“That Miss Granger is a Muggleborn whose parents were in hiding. When they were killed, she came to me, as we were old friends,” Professor McGonagall said firmly. “That will account for her condition and the suddenness of her arrival. Speaking of which, Miss Granger, how _did_ you get here?”

Hermione blushed. Looking back, the last desperate decisions she and Professor Snape had made seemed…more than a little risky. Not that there was any other option, of course, but…

“Um. I jumped through the Mirror of Erised, Professor. We – Professor Snape and I – weren’t entirely sure that it would work, but Professor Dumbledore seemed fairly confident. It was his plan – well, this isn’t his plan, but his plan was stupid so we elected to ignore it.”

“I thought you said you and – “ Severus looked deeply uncomfortable for a moment – “Professor Snape were the last survivors. Where does Dumbledore come in?”

“His portrait in the Headmaster’s Office,” Hermione said, and stifled a yawn. “Could we continue this tomorrow sometime? I think the Invigoration Draught’s given me up as a bad job. Also I think I reek.”

“You do,” Severus offered, before blushing. He was not an attractive blusher – his entire face flushed a dull, ugly red and he seemed to flinch in embarrassment.

“That makes sense,” Hermione offered. “I’ve been through a war and ridden a dragon since my last bath – although I did get dunked in a lake after the dragon, though I’m not sure it counts. Could you give me a hand up? I think my legs have gone out on me. Professor, may I use your bathroom?”

“Of course, Miss Granger, it’s right through there. There’s a bathrobe in there you can use, as well.”

Hermione nodded and put out her hands for Severus to pull her to her feet, but he gasped and pushed back the sleeve of Professor Snape’s robe, staring at the word cut into the soft flesh of her forearm.

“Who did this to you?” he asked in a soft, horrified voice, tracing the word with a shaking hand.

Hermione glanced down at the livid raised scars tracing the word _Mudblood_ on her arm.

“Parting gift from Bellatrix, to go with the Cruciatus tremors and the nightmares,” she said. “Bill said she used a cursed knife to make sure it scarred.”

“Bellatrix?” Lilly asked on an indrawn breath. “Bella _Black_ did that to you? Are you serious? Bella Black wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

“What?” Hermione asked – and then she felt all the colour drain from her face as a set of Professor Snape’s memories surfaced. “Oh, Oh _god._ Oh, that poor girl,” and she fell to her knees and retched until she was sure she was going to break in half. When she became aware of her surroundings again, Severus and Lily were kneeling on either side of her, Lily holding her hair back while Severus held a hastily-conjured basin before her. It didn’t contain much more than bile – a testament to how little she’d eaten lately. Hermione wiped her mouth and looked up at Professor McGonagall, who had come to kneel in front of her. “Professor, you have to stop Bellatrix from leaving the school after exams. You have to keep her safe!”

“Safe from _what_ , Miss Granger?” Professor McGonagall asked.

“He took her, Professor, and he-he cursed her. Crucio at first, until her mind broke, and then some kind of…some kind of binding spell. He turned her mind _inside-out_ , and bound her to him, and when he…when he was gone, it drove her even more insane, oh God, Professor, we have to save her.” She managed to stop her babbling and huddled here, on her knees, staring at McGonagall.

“She’s said that she’s scared to go home,” Severus muttered. “Rodolphus Lestrange has been asking to marry her, and she’s terrified that her parents might say yes.”

“Will you talk to her, Severus?” Professor McGonagall asked. “Get her to come to me. She’s good enough that it wouldn’t be suspicious if I offer her a position as my apprentice – except of course, that I haven’t taken an apprentice these twelve years.”

“I’ll do my best, Professor,” Severus said. “I’ll talk to her as soon as I can get her alone.”

They hauled Hermione to her feet and she staggered, her legs as weak as a newborn foal’s.

“How are you going to manage a bath if you can’t stand up straight?” Severus asked quietly.

“I’ll help her,” Lily said. “Is that okay?”

“Thanks,” Hermione said, leaning gratefully against Lily as the other girl helped her to the bathroom.

As the door closed behind her, she heard Professor McGonagall begin to speak.

“And now, gentlemen, you will explain to me about your animagus forms.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like anyone who wants to to weigh in on a few thoughts I've been having:
> 
> What do we think about the idea of having Adult Snape's memories coalesce into a sort of personality inside Hermione's head? I was thinking that he could be an amusing Greek Chorus, but I'm not committed to the idea so I'd like some input. On the one hand, it will be great fun. On the other, another character I have to keep track of and make sure he has enough lines. On the other other hand, wouldn't the presence of Adult Snape in Hermione's brain cause some serious awkwardness if (when) a romance eventually develops between her and Baby Snape? Part of me wants to say fuck it and have a romance between Hermione and Brain!Snape, but I hate doomed romances so no.
> 
> How does everyone feel about the characterization thus far? I don't have a lot to go on according to canon, so I'm just sort of going with the flow. Do you guys think that Severus is not like, defensive enough? Are the Maurauders being too nice? I know Lily doesn't say much, but I've headcanoned her as the sort of person who doesn't say much unless she's got something important to say.
> 
> Oh, and: I know that according to canon, Bellatrix is the eldest of the Black girls. In my version, she's younger than Narcissa and Andromeda by several years, because why not.
> 
> I love reading everyone's comments, please feel free to leave as many as you like!


	5. Tell me a secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today, I bring you...MOAR TALKINGZ! Also a bath, a meal, and a number of substandard potions.

Lily helped the strange girl from the future into the bathroom. Sev was right, she did reek – blood and fire and other things Lily didn’t really have words for – and once she shucked the overlarge black robes, it became clear just how skinny she really was.

“I’ll get the water ready,” Lily said, and turned away to let Hermione undress in peace, but not before noticing the way the other girl’s eyes kept returning to the door. She’d seen that look before, on the rare occasions she’d visited Sev’s house when his parents weren’t home. “Would you like me to lock the door? I can cast silencing charms as well.”

Hermione’s smile was bright and brilliant and relieved, and Lily found herself smiling back as she cast the spells. The bath filled quickly, and Lily hunted through the small collection of bath salts until she found a rather lovely lavender one she thought Hermione would find soothing. When she turned back Hermione had stripped down, folding her clothes into a neat little pile on top of which rested a beaded bag that had seen better days.

“I’m actually really glad you offered to help me,” Hermione said as Lily helped her into the bath. “I was wondering how I could get a chance to talk to you alone.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” the other girl said drily. “You. It’s about what happened earlier today with Severus. Are you going to forgive him, Lily?”

Lily sat back, holding the jug she’d conjured to wet Hermione’s hair. After a moment, she remembered herself and poured the water out over the matted curls, slicking it down, and reached for the shampoo.

“Is that important? For the war?”

“You have no idea how important, Lily. If you and Severus are no longer friends, he has nobody to vouch for him after school, and no way to fight for your side. In my timeline, he went to Plan B and joined the Death Eaters instead.”

Lily’s hands stilled in Hermione’s hair.

“He…I never thought he’d actually do it. I mean, I know he doesn’t think much of Muggles, but…”

“No, no!” Hermione said, twisting around to look up at Lily urgently. “It’s not about Muggles or anything like that, Lily! He wanted to become valuable enough to Voldemort that he could protect you. He knew – at least, Professor Snape in my timeline, knew, that you would fight against Voldemort and make yourself a target. He knew he wouldn’t be able to convince you not to. Plan A was to join the Order with you and protect you that way. Plan B was joining the Death Eaters and making himself indispensable to Voldemort so that if he asked the Dark Lord to leave you alone…”

“For me? But…why? He’s not…he doesn’t _fancy_ me, does he?” The thought was…strange. She couldn’t imagine fancying Severus. It would be like snogging Petunia – it just wouldn’t work.

“Um…I don’t think so? Let me have a think about how I can explain this.” Hermione set about scrubbing her body mechanically, a strange, inward expression on her face. She obediently ducked under when Lily rinsed out the shampoo, but didn’t say a word for several minutes. Lily, who’d spent enough time watching Sev work through a tricky problem in his mind, kept her mouth shut and waited for Hermione to come back. “I don’t think he fancies you,” Hermione eventually said. “But he does love you. The same way I loved H-Harry and Ron. You’re his first friend, his _only_ friend. You’re more than family to him, you’re…well, you’re the only good thing in his world, Lily. It matters to him that you’re happy, that you’re safe, more than you can ever know.”

Lily rubbed the conditioner into Hermione’s hair with slow, careful movements, carefully untangling a series of tangles and mats, some of which needed her wand to slice through them. It was a little disconcerting, to think of Sev being so…so devoted to her, that he would do something like that.

“Did it work?” she asked eventually.

Hermione shook her head.

“It went more badly wrong than he could ever have imagined. He overheard a prophecy referring to the Dark Lord, and took it to him. And that went well, the Dark Lord was so pleased with him…when Voldemort asked him what his reward would be, he said that he wanted you to be safe, and Voldemort promised that no Death Eater would touch you, although he did p-punish him for asking. Only then Voldemort figured out that the prophecy referred to you…or your son, anyway.”

“I had a son?”

“Yes. So Severus begged him to spare you, pointed out that there were other children the prophecy could apply to, but Voldemort wasn’t convinced. Severus went to Dumbledore and told him what he knew, and Dumbledore asked him what he would give him, if Dumbledore took you away and hid you, and he offered to spy for him on the Dark Lord.”

“He…wouldn’t Dumbledore have protected me anyway?” Lily asked. “I mean…if the prophecy was that important?”

“Professor Snape eventually thought that Dumbledore would have, but at that time, he was frantic with fear for you and of course he never really trusted Dumbledore, so he took the deal, and Dumbledore hid you away, you and your family, but that went wrong too, and you…”

“I died, didn’t I?”

Hermione nodded, staring straight ahead, her chin resting on her knees. Lily pulled the plug and opened the taps, allowing more hot water to fill the cooling tub. They weren’t leaving until she heard the end of this story, even if she had to use up every drop of hot water in Hogwarts.

“We later found out that Voldemort had actually tried to keep to the letter of his bargain with Severus. He offered you a chance to step aside – he didn’t care about you, he just wanted Harry – but you threw yourself in front of his Avada. You died a hero, if that helps.”

“So…I died,” Lily said, fascinated almost in spite of herself. “What happened then? What did Sev do?”

“Well, once you were…dead…Voldemort cast the Killing Curse at your son. It rebounded, though, destroying the house and – almost everyone thought – killing Voldemort in the process. Dumbledore said that your willing sacrifice created a loving shield around Harry, so that Voldemort couldn’t touch him. He told Severus that if he hadn’t tried to bargain for your life, Voldemort wouldn’t have offered to let you stand aside, and the curse would not have rebounded. I’m still not sure if he thought that would help or not. Severus was hysterical, of course – he wanted to die, couldn’t see much point in the world if you weren’t in it – but Dumbledore made him promise not to, made him promise to protect your son and help prepare him for the Dark Lord’s return.”

“So he…what, raised him?” Lily could almost see it, Sev raising a tiny boy-Lily. He’d be a fantastic father, she thought – he knew exactly how _not_ to do it.

“No, Dumbledore gave him to Petunia to raise. It went about as well as you’d expect – until he was eleven, Harry lived in a cupboard under the stairs.”

Lily froze.

“Petunia did that to my son? _Why_?”

Hermione shrugged.

“Her husband was an asshole. That probably didn’t help. And she hated magic even more after you were killed, and of course Harry was a symbol of all that, so…”

“That’s _awful_. That poor boy! Did Dumbledore know?”

“I always thought he did,” Hermione said. “He never told Severus though, and since I’ve received his memories, I have a very nasty suspicion as to why. I’m not sure I’m right, but I think…I think he was trying to make it so that Harry would be willing to die to protect the Wizarding World. Before he died, he told Professor Snape that Harry would have to die, because a part of the Dark Lord’s soul was locked in his body. Professor Snape was horrified, of course – he hated Harry, but he didn’t want him _dead_ , you understand? He’d spend the last few years of his life protecting him, and to find out that Dumbledore had always intended for him to die…well, the last two years were very hard on him. I’m very surprised he was sane enough to function by the…by the end.”

“How did he die? Your Professor Snape?” Lily asked. She privately decided that she'd come back to Sev hating her son a bit later, when she'd had more time to think.

“The last time I saw him he was conjuring FiendFyre in the Headmaster’s office as the Death Eaters were coming through the door. I don’t think even the unicorn blood could have saved him from that.”

Lily stared at her again.

“He drank _Unicorn blood_?”

“He had some on hand from when our first-year DADA teacher was trying to use it to resurrect the Dark Lord, and when Voldemort used his snake to kill him, he thought he could use it and live long enough to pass on his information to Harry, only of course it didn’t work, because by the time he was…functioning again, Harry was already possessed by Voldemort and almost everyone was dead except me. So he thought it was time for a dramatic last stand, except then he found me and he thought maybe Dumbledore’s plan could work. Although he didn’t really believe that you could use the Mirror that way, but it was a chance…”

“If he didn’t think it would work, why did he make you do it?” Lily asked, ignoring all the rest of it. She’d think about it later.

“He didn’t _make_ me, he just offered the option. We never mentioned it, but the other option was that he could just cut my throat – no, don’t look like that, Lily! It would have been a kindness, really it would have! I’d have been _grateful_ if he’d done it, and not let the Death Eaters have me. But he’d always kind of liked me, although you wouldn’t have said that if you’d seen how he treated me in class, and he was so tired of having to kill people he liked…”

“God, what a world you come from, Hermione,” Lily finally said. “I can understand why you came back, now.”

“Yeah, it…well. I’m not going to let that happen again. And step one of the plan is to make Severus realise that Plan B is not viable. Could you help me up?”

“So you think that if I stay friends with Severus,” Lily said as she pulled Hermione to her feet and wrapped her in one of McGonagall’s large, fluffy towels, “that will help?”

“Well, in my timeline you never did forgive him,” Hermione said. “So that’s a change already. And if he joins Dumbledore’s side instead of Voldemort’s that’s huge – I’ll show you my Arithmantic working at some point so you can really see how important all of this is going to be later.”

When Hermione was dry, Lily helped her into Professor McGonagall’s fluffy dressing gown, and they stuffed Hermione’s dirty clothes into the beaded bag before shuffling out into the sitting room.

Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey were waiting, and there was a small bowl of porridge on the table. The boys had been dismissed and Peter (Peter the apparently-traitor!) had been and gone, because a tray of potions bottles next to the porridge.

“Eat,” Madam Pomfrey said as Lily helped Hermione into the chair, and Hermione took the bowl in both shaking hands. Lily stood behind her and conjured a hairbrush – Hermione’s hair looked like the kind that went absolutely wild if you have it half a chance. She brushed and braided the other girl’s hair while Hermione ate silently under Pomfrey’s gimlet eye. Only when she was done and reached out for the tray of potions, did Professor McGonagall speak.

“Miss Granger, I would like to believe that you are in earnest,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “However, surely you can understand that your reluctance to take your information to the leader of the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named does leave your actions open to other, darker interpretations. Can you offer me any proof – any proof whatsoever – that you are who and what you say you are?”

Hermione sat up straighter, leaving off her inspection of the potions – she appeared to have been sorting them while she listened to McGonagall – and squared her shoulders.

“Would Veritaserum convince you, Professor? I’m perfectly willing to submit to questioning under Veritaserum – provided that it can be done under Madam Pomfrey’s supervision, as the potion may sometimes interact negatively with the aftereffects of prolonged Cruciatus torture. If you think it necessary, you can bring in Alastor Moody to question me, but nobody else. Would that work?”

“Why Moody, specifically?” Madam Pomfrey asked. “And how do you know about the interactions between Veritaserum and Cruciatus residue? That information is not public knowledge.”

Hermione waved a thin hand in a gesture of dismissal.

“Professor Snape,” was all she said. “He figured out a test for it, I think, but it’s not coming clear – some of his memories are a bit vague. As for Moody – well, he was the only Auror alive in this time that Professor Snape had any good experiences with – they weren’t that good, mind, but at least Moody wasn’t the type to take advantage of someone who was chained to the ground. The Professor never had any doubt about Moody’s commitment to the cause, and he has memories of several times where Moody hid things from or directly lied to Dumbledore when he thought that Dumbledore was mistaken. I didn't know him very well myself, because the Mad-Eye who taught Defense in my fourth year turned out to have been a Death Eater who was working toward resurrecting Voldemort, but he was tremendously helpful to the Order and gave me some tips that came in very handy later on. If I can convince Mad-Eye, he’ll be a strong ally for us.”

Professor McGonagall sat back, a thin smile on her face. Personally, Lily was still stuck on the fact that Hermione apparently thought nothing of the fact that two of her DADA teachers had apparently been trying to resurrect the Dark Lord.

“That seems like an excellent plan, Miss Granger. I will arrange a meeting with Alastor Moody. In the meantime, you will stay here in my quarters – I’ll transfigure a bed for you. It would be best if you didn’t wander around the school, if you don’t mind.”

“Professor,” Hermione said, and it sounded like she was smiling, “if you thought I was going to object to the opportunity to stay in one place and sleep for a while, you are gravely mistaken. I’ve been on the run for over a year; I’m exhausted and I’m pretty sure I’m getting scurvy. If you can promise me food and books and a place to lay my head, I’ll stay here as long as you think is wise.”

“Excellent!” Madam Pomfrey said. “Now, drink your potions. Minerva, you’d best get to work on that bed, Miss Granger is going straight to sleep once she’s done with them.”

Professor McGonagall nodded and strode to the bedroom, and Hermione leaned forward and picked up one of the potions. She started knocking them back, one by one, delivering a muttered commentary as she did.

“Vitamin draught…acceptable, although the colour’s off, stomach soother, excellent idea – didn’t use fresh borage – tranquillity solution, not a bad plan, I’d like to meet the person who brewed this though, bet they don’t have to dink this swill-“

“Excuse me?” Madam Pomfrey said, her eyebrows climbing almost to her hairline. “What did you just call that potion?”

“It’s swill,” Hermione said flatly. “I mean, look at it! It’s got _sedimentation_. It was obviously decanted while it was still warm, and you see these flecks? They’re supposed to be blue, not blue-green. Whoever brewed this didn’t steep the lavender, they just mushed the flowers and chucked them in! What cack-handed poltroon have you got brewing the school’s potions?”

“You seem to know an awful lot about potions, young lady,” Madam Pomfrey said.

“Yes, well, I spent five years with Severus Snape breathing down my neck, just waiting for the opportunity to take house points if I screwed up, and now I’ve got his _memories_ in my _head_. If I didn’t know an awful lot about potions, I’d be really worried,” Hermione said grumpily. “Now, who’s brewing these potions, because if you’ve been providing them with the kind of ingredients that were given to Professor Snape, then you’re getting ripped off.”

“Professor Slughorn brews the potions for the Infirmary, I think. I mean, isn’t that part of the Potions Master’s job?” Lily asked.

Hermione made a little noise of discontent.

“Ugh. He’s a hack. Tell you what, Madam Pomfrey. After I’ve spoken to Moody, if you can get me a quiet place to brew and the kind of ingredients that are _supposed_ to go into these potions, I’ll keep your shelves filled.”

“Yes, yes, alright. Now drink the rest of them – they may be substandard, but they work.”

Hermione nodded and downed the other potions, leaving a last, small vial standing full on the tray.

“I’m not taking Dreamless Sleep. I have a great deal of memory integration to do if I’m not going to go insane, and anyway, Slughorn never did get the hang of sleeping potions.”

Madam Pomfrey just nodded and took back the Dreamless Sleep, just as Professor McGonagall returned.

“Right, Miss Granger, let’s get you to bed,” she said, and pulled Hermione to her feet. Lily thought that she saw a trace of worried sadness on her face as she steered Hermione through the door to the bedroom, but she couldn’t be sure, because Madam Pomfrey was herding her out of the sitting room like a sheepdog with only one sheep.

The door to Professor McGonagall’s quarters closed behind her with a decisive click, and Lily was left standing in the hallway, wondering how it could still be daylight when it seemed as though weeks had passed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does this story need a Major Character Death tag because of the death of Adult Severus?


	6. Enter Alastor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is more talking, tales of being sort of a cat, and Alastor Moody makes an appearance.

Severus left the Great Hall feeling rather chuffed with himself. His potion had come out beautifully, he’d be very surprised if he didn’t get an O, stupid Potter and his stupid friends hadn’t bothered him for two whole days, and best of all, Lily had forgiven him for his stupidity.

It had taken a bit of pleading, and Lily had let him know in no uncertain terms that if the word ‘Mudblood’ ever crossed his lips again she’d never speak to him again. Not that he  _ wanted _ to say it, anymore - seeing the word written in scar tissue on the arm of a girl with sad dark eyes had made it all somehow more  _ real _ to him. He kept seeing, whenever he closed his eyes, Lily’s face above that scarred arm, and the night before he’d dreamed that the lines on Granger’s arm had formed numbers instead.

When he heard the running footsteps behind him, he looked around and cursed his stupidity. He was in an empty hallway flanked with abandoned classrooms.  _ Dammit _ .

“Snape! Oi, Snape!” and of course it was fucking stupid Potter, because he just couldn’t sleep at night unless he ruined Severus’ day, could he?

Severus turned, wand out, into a duelling stance, but Potter just skidded to a stop and raised both hands.

“Merlin, you’re fast, Snape,” he said, panting a bit. He rested his hands on his knees for a moment, then straightened up. “McGonagall wants to know if you could come to her office at three.”

Severus nodded suspiciously, and to his surprise, Potter grinned at him, said “Great!” and took himself off. Severus was left standing in the hallway, still a little stunned. Quite possibly, what had just happened was the first pleasant interaction he’d ever had with Potter. It was weird.

He cast a quick  _ Tempus _ and saw that he had another two hours before he was due at McGonagall’s – just enough time to find Bella.

Bella, predictably, was in the library studying Charms – her last NEWT, which she would be writing the next day, and her worst subject. Severus thought she looked more stressed than even the NEWTs could justify, and she squeaked when he sat down next to her.

“Oh, Severus,” she said with a smile. “It’s just you.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, and cast  _ Muffliato _ around the table. “Listen, Bella, I’ve been thinking about your problem, and I think I have an idea.”

Bella stared at him, her dark-blue eyes large in her pale face. She looked like someone who was willing to grab onto any scrap of wood in a sea of terror.

“Tell me!” she hissed, grabbing at his arm. “I’ll do anything – I thought about running away but they have my phylactery, I’d never get far and I don’t know-“

“Bella! Hush! You should go to McGonagall and ask about becoming her apprentice. You’re seventeen, you’re  _ very _ good at Transfiguration, and if she accepts you there’s not a damn thing your parents could do about it.”

Bellatrix sagged as though all the fight had gone out of her, and hid her head in her hands.

“To the head of  _ Gryffindor _ , Severus? She’d never take me. I’m sorry, Sev, you’re sweet for trying to help but-“

“I already spoke to her about it,” he blurted, and her head whipped up so fast her long dark hair went flying. “I…she’s always been…fair. To Slytherins. And Merlin knows Slughorn’s no use, he’d never offend your parents.”

“That’s certainly true,” Bella snorted. “I can’t believe I actually thought he’d  _ try _ . But…what did she say?”

“She said yes, Bella. All you have to do is go and ask her.”

She gaped at him for a moment and then staggered to her feet and started for the door, leaving all her books behind. Severus took a moment to Summon everything into her bag and followed, catching up to her in the corridor outside.

“You should have talked to me first,” she said softly as he handed her the bag. “You know I don’t like people making decisions for me, Severus.”

He shrugged and scratched the back of his neck, not looking at her.

“I do know that, Bella, but I wasn’t…I wasn’t trying to make the decision for you – it’s your decision, obviously. But I didn’t want to get your hopes up if she did say no, you know?”

She shrugged and ruffled his hair, making him duck irritably, and they made their way to McGonagall’s office in silence. Severus hung back as Bella took a deep breath and knocked at the door, and heaved a sigh as McGonagall opened it almost immediately.

Her eyes took in Bella’s pale scared face and Severus hovering behind her, and she smiled. Severus had always thought she’d have a nice smile – he’d never had it pointed at him before, of course, but he’d seen her smiling at other people – but he was surprised at how proud he was of himself in that moment, with Professor McGonagall smiling at him like he’d won the House Cup (not that she’d have smiled at him if he actually  _ had _ won the House Cup: there were limits, after all.)

“Miss Black. Please come in. Mr Snape, if you wouldn’t mind waiting in my sitting room for our meeting later?”

Severus nodded, gave Bella a pat on the shoulder, and scarpered through the inner door and into the room where he’d last seen Hermione Granger.

She wasn’t there, so Severus took a seat and grabbed his Herbology textbook. It was only a few minutes later that he heard a gentle humming come from behind a half-closed door he hadn’t noticed before. He got up as silently as he could and moved closer, pushing gently at the door.

He’d got it almost all the way open – open enough to see that the source of the humming was Granger, who was sat cross-legged on the bed.,The bed itself  was covered in pieces of paper, and Granger appeared intent on a large sketchpad that hung in the air in front of her. Of course, the damn door creaked just as he saw her.

Ganger spun to her feet and sent the sketch pad flying, one hand in a defensive posture, ready to shield or deflect, and the other conjuring a ball of purplish fire. Severus took a smart step to the rear, both hands raised. She stared at him wide-eyed for a long moment before seeming to breathe a sigh of intense relief.

“Buggery  _ fuck _ ,” she muttered, banishing the fire and sagging to sit on the bed. “It’s you.”

Severus scowled. Well, maybe it had been ridiculous to think that she’d be happy to see him, but there was no need to be  _ rude _ about it.

“Sorry, I’ll just…”

“No, I’m sorry,” she said, rushing across the room to grab his arm. “I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just…you startled me, is all. I’m a little bit paranoid.”

“From what you’ve said, you’ve got reason to be,” Severus said. “I’ll just go sit in there and wait for McGonagall.”

“Oh, you don’t have to! Come, sit down and keep me company for a bit. You can tell me how exams have been going. Have James and Sirius stopped harassing you? I think Professor McGonagall told them she’d see them expelled if it was the last thing she did if they ever said another cross word to you.” 

Severus meekly followed her grip on his sleeve and let her push him down to sit on the bed. She immediately stuck her arm into a beaded bag and started rooting about.

“Well, sort of?” he said hesitantly, hitching himself to sit cross-legged and looking down so his face would be hidden behind his hair. “Potter came to tell me McGonagall wanted to see me. It went okay, I guess. Why do you care?”

She snorted.

“I don’t particularly want to get into a fight with either of them. People always said that James was quite good in a fight, and Sirius knew the  _ nastiest _ little hexes,” she said. “They’re tits, but not actually  _ bad people _ , and I just don’t understand what they’ve got against you.”

“You don’t have to fight my battles!” he said, looking up at her and frowning. She was still much too thin, he saw, and there were still the remains of bruises here and there, but she had some colour in her face that wasn’t blood, and her hair was neatly braided back. She looked a lot better than she had two days ago.

She shrugged.

“I’m not intending to  _ fight _ them. I intend to  _ stop _ them, and if I have to kill them to do it, I will.” Her voice sounded frighteningly cold, and then she sighed. “Sorry, I’ve got a lot of memory integration still to do. I’m a bit…eh, not quite on even keel, let’s put it like that. But anyway, Severus, I’m actually really glad you came early, because I’ve got some things for you and some information. Which do you want first?”

Severus shrugged, and she stopped moving, looking thoughtful for a moment. Then she flicked a hand at the door, which closed firmly, and took a deep breath. Severus cast a nonverbal  _ Muffliato _ just incase it proved to be necessary.

“First, I want to make clear that you accepting my information will have no influence on whether or not I’m going to give you this,” she said, holding up a thick bundle – book-shaped, and wrapped in cloth. “This is yours by right, and you don’t have to follow my advice to get it – I’m not bribing you or blackmailing you or anything similar. Do you understand?”

He nodded, staring at her intent face.

“Okay. Severus, Plan B isn’t going to work.”

He jerked back as though he’d been slapped, and felt all the colour drain from his face. Granger wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, looking at her feet, and he decided against playing games. He took a breath and licked his lips.

“How badly does it go wrong?” he managed. Eventually.

“In my time, Lily died five years from now, because of something you told the Dark Lord. It was a good plan in theory, Severus, but you can’t control the Dark Lord’s actions.” She sat down on the bed across from him, shoving some of the paper aside and resting her elbows on her knees.

Severus rubbed his hand across his face and scowled at his knees.

“So what do I do? I’ve been working on this plan since I was thirteen, Granger, but Plan A just isn’t going to work. Nobody will vouch for me to join the Order, not even Lily, probably.”

“If my plan works, by the time you leave school in two years, Alastor Moody himself will vouch for you. I’m going to let him see your future self’s memories using Legilimency while I’m on Veritaserum. Then, if he’s convinced, we’re all going on a little Penseive visit.”

Severus stared at her. She looked very determined, this skinny girl in her ratty jeans and her bare feet, with that vicious word carved into her bare arm and the end of a nasty scar coming out the top of her t-shirt to mar her knife-blade of a collarbone.

“I’m willing to give that a shot,” he said. “You won’t mind if I keep my options open?”

“Of course not,” she said with a little smirk. “It would be most unlike you not to, actually.”

Severus rested his back against the cornerpost of the bed.

“Tell me about him,” he said. “Your Professor Snape. I’m curious to know what I might have been like. Was he your favourite teacher?”

She laughed a little, just softly, and shook her head.

“Nobody would have believed me if I’d told them, but yeah, he actually was. I mean, he was an absolute bastard, but he had the  _ best _ insults. I used to write them down to send to my dad, and him and my mum would read them out to each other. I always thought he practiced them, but apparently it was all improvisation.”

“Really?” Severus asked. “I’ve never been good at…talking, things.”

She made a little snorting noise.

“He was shit at any kind of human interaction though. Very bitter. Very angry, all the time. In all the years he taught us I only saw him laugh once. Well, I  _ made  _ him laugh, actually, and I’m still quite impressed with myself about that one.”

Severus leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. Granger was grinning to herself and rooting in the bag again. Eventually, she brought out a folder, from which she extracted a piece of paper. It turned out to be a pencil drawing, incredibly lifelike. A tall, dark-haired man in black stared out from it. The background looked quite familiar – made sense, he supposed, it had to be somewhere in Hogwarts.

“Give it a tap with your wand and you’ll see what I mean,”

Severus poked the paper, and the man opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Then he shook his head, brought his hand to his mouth, and began, silently, to laugh. He laughed so hard he actually had to grab hold of the curtain railing to keep standing, hiding his face in his hand.

“What did you do to make him laugh?” Severus asked.

“I had a…minor mishap with a potion in second year,” Granger said, blushing. Severus raised his eyebrows at her. “Oh, God, you look just like him when you do that.”

“Oh go on, tell me. I want to know what you did.”

She sighed.

“Git,” she muttered. “I turned myself into sort of a cat.”

“Sort of a cat.”

“Yes. I mean, the Polyjuice was fine, Harry and-and Ron had no trouble, but of course the bloody hair I got was from a cat, and so I turned myself into this sort of weird cat creature. I’ll show you a picture in a minute. Anyway, so the boys take me to the Hospital Wing and Madam Pomfrey is totally lost and I, of course, am terrified that I’m going to be furry forever. I’m actually panicking too much to talk, because I have paws and I can’t write exams with paws, I was a very strange child. Anyway, so she brings in Professor Snape because he knows all about curses and the Dark Arts, and he comes in and takes one look at me, and laughs so hard I’m actually worried that he might faint or, or wet himself or something.”

“He sounds like a bastard,” Severus said, but Granger’s eyes were sparkling at the memory, so it couldn’t have been  _ that _ bad.

“No, it was actually very comforting, you know? Because I knew if it was  _ really  _ bad, Professor Snape wouldn’t be laughing at me, you see? And then when he was finished – he had actual tears in his eyes – he looks at me and goes, “Twenty points to Gryffindor for the funniest thing I’ve seen all year, Miss Granger,” which…well, I nearly fainted. I mean, I never even told anyone about that because Professor Snape  _ never _ gave points to Gryffindor, so they’d have thought that the whole thing turned my brain weird.”

“So then he turned you back?”

“Well, no, I was stuck like that for almost a month. So I got the boys to bring me my schoolbag, and I was trying to draw myself, because I mean…cat creature! But I couldn’t, because of the paws. And Professor Snape came in while I was fiddling with the pencils and sort of crying a little, and he didn’t say anything, just taught me the charm to have the pencils draw what I see in my mind. And then later when I was doing the proper sketches and things he helped me with those, you know, the measuring and everything. He even measured my tail for me and did the sketches of that, and helped me figure out the bone articulation in my paws. And he asked me why I was brewing the Polyjuice and only took fifteen points off for stealing from his stores, and when I explained the boys’ theory about the Heir of Slytherin he sort of almost laughed, and said “So your friends believe that because Draco Malfoy is an odious little tit, he has to be the Heir? And you didn’t think to consult one of the many genealogy tomes in the library before making an illegal potion? It’s a capital offense to theorise ahead of the data, Miss Granger, as I believe this little incident has shown you.” And then he gave me the potion to turn me human again. And later, whenever he thought I was…running ahead of the facts or jumping to conclusions, he would write ‘meow’ on my essays, or just look at me and make a little meowing sound.” She stopped talking abruptly, still blushing, and shoved another picture at him.

The little cat-girl in this picture was already moving, turning her head slowly from side to side to provide a clear view of the ears, flicking them back and forth, and opening her mouth to show off her pointy teeth. Severus grinned at her serious expression, and looked back up at Granger.

“Who brewed the Polyjuice?”

“I did, of course!”

Severus sat up straight, staring at her blankly.

“ _ You _ ? But you said you were in second year! How…”

“Well, there was a basilisk, and the teachers didn’t know what to do, and the Chamber of Secrets had been opened and Harry thought it was Draco Malfoy, the little boil, and of course Ron thought it was Professor Snape, so…”

“They thought  _ I  _ was the Heir of Slytherin?” Severus demanded. “Not very clever, are they? If I could open a secret chamber in the school and unleash a deadly monster on my enemies, we’d have a terribly lifelike statue of bloody James Potter in the Entrance Hall.”

Granger shrugged one shoulder and looked a bit sad, and Severus remembered abruptly that the people he was talking about were dead, and had died horribly.

“Sorry, I…I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered.

“No, it’s…would you like to see them?” She pulled another sketchbook from her bag and patted the spot next to her. Awkwardly, Severus shoved aside piles of paper – some of which, he saw, were drawings – and settled next to her, with his back to the headboard. Granger shuffled over until she could spread the sketchbook out over both their laps, and stroked it reverently before opening it.

The first picture was of two boys, a beaming redhead and a small dark-haired boy who would have looked exactly like James Potter (down to the glasses) if it hadn’t been for his baggy, oversized clothes and the way he held himself. He was smiling hesitantly, almost unbelievingly, and his posture – like the oversized clothes, the kind of clothes you got second-hand, ugly and worn and hanging off you like sacks, and didn’t Severus just know about  _ that _ – was that of someone who thought that if he stood too tall, he might get hit. He was shorter than the redhead and skinny enough that Severus winced, but he looked dazed and delighted.

“That’s James Potter’s son, isn’t it,” he said, and Granger stroked her finger gently over the boys’ faces.

“Harry. He was such a sweet boy, Severus. So delighted when he came here to Hogwarts. I…we weren’t friends at first, you know? I was a bossy little know-it-all and he’d already bonded with Ron, but I watched and…the first night here at Hogwarts he just stared at all the food, like he didn’t know whether he was going to get a smack for taking some or not. It took years before he stopped hiding food in his pockets for later – just in case.”

They sat quietly for a moment, watching the picture as the boys laughed and smiled. There was something Severus didn’t understand.

“Why was he like that?” he asked. “You can see he wasn’t cared for properly, his clothes are too big, his hair looks awful, and he’s so thin…I mean…I don’t like Potter much, Granger, but I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t love his own son.”

“James died when Harry was still a baby. He was brought up by Muggles who…well, they didn’t particularly like him, or wizards. Dumbledore always said that there were reasons; the blood protection from when Lily died for-“

“ _ Lily _ ?” Severus yelped. “Lily died for James Potter’s son?” Severus froze as a terrible, terrible thought occurred to him. “Oh, no, she didn’t marry the great prat, did she?”

“I’m afraid she did,” Granger said, and laughed as Severus made gagging noises. “I understand they were quite happy until, well, you know.”

“He’s not good enough for her,” Severus grumbled, trying to wrap his mind around the idea.  _ Lily _ with Potter? Stupid Potter with his stupid hair and his completely fucking unnecessary vendetta against Severus?  _ How _ ? “What could she see in him?”

Granger shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I never knew him. The James I met is arrogant, full of himself, and thinks he’s terribly charming. I suppose some girls like that, but I’ve never really seen the appeal, personally.”

She turned the page, and Severus decided to shelve that discussion in favour of looking at her drawings.

He laughed as they came to a page where Potter was hanging from the hand of a troll, the redhead – Ron – pointing his wand. When Granger touched the picture, the troll’s club rose from the ground and bonked it on the head, sending it – and Potter – crashing to the ground.

“That’s where our friendship started,” Granger said, and when Severus looked at her, she had a wry half-smile on her face. “Facing down a mountain troll in a girl’s loo, what a beginning.”

Severus gaped at her until he remembered to shut his mouth.

“You mean that actually  _ happened _ ?”

“Mmm, first year. The Defense teacher let a troll in to distract everyone while he looked for the Philosopher’s Stone and it found me crying in the loo. Harry and Ron thought it was Professor Snape, of course.”

“Did they blame me- him for  _ everything _ that went wrong?” Severus found himself asking.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Granger said with a bit of a grin. “In first year, they thought he was were trying to steal the Philosopher’s Stone. In second year, they thought he was the Heir of Slytherin. In third, Harry was fairly sure that he was helping Sirius Black enter Hogwarts to murder Harry – that’s a long story that I’ll tell you later, but Professor Snape was terribly brave – and in fourth year they were convinced he’d entered Harry into the Triwizard Tournament. They didn’t blame him for much in fifth year, because that horrible Umbridge toad was there and she was honestly much worse, and in sixth year Harry was absolutely sure that Professor Snape was plotting with Draco Malfoy to do something horrible.”

“Sounds like your school years were much more adventurous than mine,” Severus said drily. “Did he ever actually do any of the things they accused him of?”

“Only the plotting with Malfoy bit, and it wasn’t so much ‘plotting with’ as ‘trying to save the stupid prat’s idiot life’. And then in seventh year we were on the run because Dumbledore was dead and Professor Snape was headmaster and there were Death Eaters in the school, and Harry blamed him for Dumbledore and wouldn't even _look_ at my equations, the great idiot. It was a hell of a year, actually.”

Severus was about to ask what had happened to Dumbledore when Granger stiffened and looked at the door, where Professor McGonagall was standing. She raised her eyebrows at Severus, who cancelled the  _ Muffliato _ , letting her talk.

“Severus, Hermione, Auror Moody is here. Are you ready? And are you still sure that you want the students involved in this?”

Granger nodded and began stuffing her sketchbooks back into the beaded bag.

“I’ll be there in a minute, Professor, and I really do think they need to be there. They need to  _ understand _ ,” Granger said. “Let me just pack these up.” McGonagall nodded and left, and Granger thrust the cloth-wrapped parcel from earlier into Severus' hands. “I almost forgot to give this to you. Shrink it down and put it in your pocket. You can look at it later.”

Severus nodded and did so, watching her gather up the drawings on the bed. In one of them, he caught the flicker of fire as she picked it up, but he saw no more as  she stuffed them all into a folder, and the folder into the beaded bag, which she flung down onto the bed as she took a deep breath.

“It’ll be fine,” Severus said quietly. “You’re telling the truth, after all.”

Granger laughed bitterly.

“It’s fine, it’s just, you know, performance anxiety.”

Severus found himself following her back into Professor McGonagall’s office, where Black, Potter, Lupin and Lily were waiting, along with a quite terrifying man with a whirling glass eye. Granger came to a stop just in front of him and smiled broadly, her eyes flicking to his feet and then to his eye. Severus took the seat next to Lily as Granger stuck out her hand.

“Pro- Auror Moody,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

He nodded and shook her hand.

“Minerva’s not one to be taken in by fools, Miss Granger, so I thought I’d come and see what she’s on about,” he said gruffly. “Now, why do you keep looking at my feet?”

Granger stiffened, and from where Severus sat he could see the back of her neck turn red.

“I-ah, well, when I knew you, sir, you had a wooden leg. Apparently someone hexed the other one off.”

He snorted.

“Well, I didn’t expect to get out of the job with all my limbs attached, so. Are you ready? You realise that you won’t be able to hide anything from me – your Occlumency shields won’t function at all, and it will hurt quite a bit.”

“I’m aware, sir,” she said grimly. “Madam Pomfrey will be coming shortly with pain potions for afterwards. For both of us – it hurts just as much doing as being done unto, this procedure. Which is why I’m grateful you’re willing to attempt it.”

Moody grinned and sat down, and Granger took the seat on the couch next to him.

“So, tell me about my future self, Granger. I’m curious.”

Granger was about ten minutes into a story about Moody being her fourth-year Defense teacher when Madam Pomfrey bustled in, potions in a little woven picnic basket at her side, and suddenly they were both all business. Granger stuck out her tongue for the three drops of Veritaserum without a word, and Moody asked a few test questions. And then it was time.

With two draughts of pain relieving potion set out on the coffee table in front of each of them, Granger and Moody faced each other and smiled grim little smiles that said more than Severus could understand. Then Moody put his wand to her temple and whispered the incantation. Severus could feel the tension in the air as everyone silently leaned forward for a better view. There wasn’t much to see – Granger’s eyes went wide and her body rigid, and Moody frowned thunderously as he entered her mind, but they didn’t move, and their faces had no expression.

Ten minutes later, Granger’s eyes began to bleed. Fifteen minutes after that, she began making soft whimpering sounds of pain, while Moody started hissing under his breath.

Severus was the first person to notice when Granger began to sway.

“She’s going to fall!” he yelped, and leapt over the coffee table to grab her by the shoulders.

“Sit behind her, Mister Snape,” Madam Pomfrey urged. “Keep her steady – if she breaks the link now there’s no telling what it could do to her.”

It took a bit of manoeuvering, but a moment later Severus was sitting behind her, gently pulling her back against his chest while Madam Pomfrey pushed Moody forward from her perch behind him so that they could maintain eye contact. The moment Granger felt him behind her, she started pushing back against him, her hands making little snatching motions in the air.

“Take her hand, Sev,” Lily said, coming to kneel beside the couch.

“Bet that’s the only way Snivelly’s ever going to get to hold a girl’s hand,” Black muttered, but it all seemed to come from far away as Lily gently worked open one of Granger’s hands and took it in both of hers. Severus grabbed hold of the other, and immediately Granger’s hand clenched painfully around his. He put his other hand on the side of her face, keeping her head still.

“You’re doing great, Granger,” he whispered in her ear. “Your Professor’s going to be so proud of you, you’re doing really well. Just a bit more, okay, and then you can rest for a while.” It seemed like her body relaxed slightly, so Severus kept it up, talking quietly in her ear while he held her head still for Moody’s invasion of her mind, telling her how proud everyone from her world he’d ever heard her mention was, that she was brave and strong, and that she was going to save the world.

It seemed like forever before Moody sucked a deep breath and blinked, and Granger let out a brief cry of pain before going utterly limp, her eyes finally closing.

“Merlin’s saggy bollocks,” Moody whispered hoarsely.

“It’s true, then,” Professor McGonagall said quietly, and if he didn’t know better Severus could have sworn that she sounded scared. “What she said, it’s true?”

Moody nodded, and his eyes met Severus’ over Granger’s head.

“The man you were, in that other time,” he said to Severus, as quiet as Severus had ever heard Moody’s booming voice. “He was the bravest man I’ve ever seen. You’re a good man, Severus Snape. Remember that.”

Severus was still trying to swallow back the lump in his throat when Professor McGonagall handed Moody a tumbler of Firewhiskey. Lily had conjured a damp cloth and was cleaning the bloody tears off Granger’s face with a gentle touch. Granger was still quiet and limp against him, her eyes only half-open as Madam Pomfrey cast a few diagnostic spells and tipped the pain potion into her mouth.

“You were wondering why she wanted the kids to be here, Minerva,” Moody said after a few moments of silence. “It’s what she’s used to. She destroyed parts of the Dark Lord’s soul herself. Her friend Harry destroyed one when he was twelve. And Albus  _ allowed  _ it.” There was such a depth of bitterness in his voice that Granger flinched, and Severus paused to whisper something soothing in her ear. “Three kids, seventh-years, on the run from that bastard for almost a full year, living off mushrooms and what they can steal, with nothing to guide them but fairy tales and legends. Was the man mad?”

“Professor Snape believed that he’d gone mad by the end,” Granger whispered. “It might have begun as far back as my first year, I don’t know. But you can see why I can’t trust Dumbledore with this information, can’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Moody said, and knocked back his drink. “And much as I hate it, Minerva, we’re going to need these kids, if we’re going to do what needs to be done. The others, the people Snape knew and trusted, as much as he trusted anyone – they’re all too loyal to Albus.”

“What will we have to do?” Potter asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

“First,” Granger said quietly, not moving from where she’d collapsed against Severus after the Legilimency session, “we’re going to have to steal Dumbledore’s Penseive. And then we probably need to go kill the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so this chapter is a bit on the short side, and it's been a while. Sorry about that. I got stuck until my beautiful beta Havelocked (who should really be credited as co-author at this point, she's contributed so much to the plot) told me (not in these exact words) to end it where it is and post it before we all die of old age.
> 
> Thanks for the advice, darling, and sorry for not listening to you about the timelines!

Minerva scowled as conversation erupted after Miss Granger’s startling pronouncement, the girl flinching from the noise, until Poppy hushed them all.

“I don’t think we quite need to resort to theft, Miss Granger,” Minerva said, allowing her mouth to curl into a small smile. “I have already fetched the Penseive from the Headmaster’s office. If he asks why I had it, I shall simply inform him that I wished to clarify my thoughts. That is, after all, what Penseives are for.”

Miss Granger grinned up at her.

“Thank you, Professor.”

“Now, if you could explain about the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets?”

The girl allowed Severus to help her sit upright, and Minerva sat down on the last open chair, watching Poppy cast yet another diagnostic spell over her. Poppy was concerned about Miss Granger’s health, much improved as it was from the half-starved wreck that had arrived at Hogwarts three days ago, and the way the child’s hands trembled as she knotted them in her lap was not a good sign. She’d had two Cruciatus flashbacks since she’d so spectacularly arrived, and screaming nightmares every night, but she’d stayed obediently in the bed in the chamber the castle had opened for her, reading and drawing and, when Minerva had time, telling stories of the place she came from.

“I’m going to assume that you all know the legend of the Chamber. First of all, it’s true. Second thing, the monster is a basilisk. Third, Voldemort is the Heir of Slytherin. He was the one who opened the Chamber fifty years ago. Or, I mean…well, it was fifty years ago for me.”

“Yes, I understand,” Minerva said. She’d been a student at the time, and she remembered the helpless terror that had stalked the school for weeks, until Hagrid was accused after poor Myrtle had been found dead. It was a source of secret shame to her that she’d ever believed it of him, of sweet gentle Hagrid with his heart as wide as the highlands of her home, but she’d been a child then, and…well, the attacks had stopped after his arrest.

“Why do we need to kill it, though?” Remus Lupin asked quietly. “Can’t we just leave it there?”

“We need the venom,” Miss Granger said flatly. “And the teeth. There are…things, that need to be destroyed, and they can only be destroyed by-“

“You’re beating about the bush, girl,” Alastor growled. “We’ll need the basilisk venom to destroy the Horcruxes Voldemort made. In her time, there were seven. At least three of those already exist now.”

Minerva felt her throat close up with the sheer horror of it – _seven horcruxes, Merciful Merlin help us_ – and raised her hand unthinking to the collar of her robes, tugging at it as though it was the cloth restricting her breathing, and not a mixture of horror and sheer debilitating terror. From somewhere far away, she heard Moody and Miss Granger explain about the horcruxes, about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s quest for immortality, and it was only when she heard Miss Granger say that the first death he’d used to create a horcrux was Myrtle’s, that Minerva slammed back into the present with a question she’d been desperate for an answer for for twenty years.

“Miss Granger,” she said sharply, and the girl jumped. “Forgive me, child, but I must know…when You-Know-Who was a student at Hogwarts, what was his name?”

“Tom Riddle,” Miss Granger said, and there was an awful rushing sound in Minerva’s ears, because she’d _known_ Tom Riddle, she’d gone to the Merlin-bebuggered Halloween _Ball_ with him in sixth year – sixth year when he was the Heir of Slytherin, sixth year when he’d murdered poor sweet Myrtle to split his soul in two.

From far away she heard herself cursing as she hadn’t since her mother had taken her behind the outhouse with a rattan cane and taught her a very firm lesson on the standard of behaviour expected from young ladies. Her students were staring at her with awe on their faces, while Alastor – who’d been at that ball too, the tit, and had spiked the punch until it was flammable, prefect or no – was snorting into his Firewhiskey.

Eventually, and it took some time, Minerva ran out of curses and snatched at Moody’s drink, draining it in one go.

“Fuck,” she said quietly, and then took a deep breath. It was time to move on to important matters. More important, in any case, than the fact that she’d had her first proper kiss from the sodding _Dark Lord_.

“Indeed,” Miss Granger murmured. She was smiling softly at some private amusement – if Minerva had to take a guess, it concerned Minerva’s reaction to this same news, in another time.

“Did I react the same, in your time?” Minerva found herself asking, and the girl laughed.

“Oh, Professor, in my time you hexed the headmaster’s beard blue for not telling you sooner,” she said. “He had to shave it all off and resort to charms to get it back to the proper length. Professor Snape mocked him about it for _months_.”

“Serves him right,” Minerva said firmly. “Now, are you up to a Penseive trip, my dear? It is getting rather late, and the students have curfew. I confess I find myself curious to know what could have happened if you hadn’t come back.”

Miss Granger nodded, and Minerva had already opened her mouth to ask one of the boys to fetch the Penseive when the door that led to her office opened to reveal Dumbledore in all his long-bearded, purple-and-blue-robed glory.

The headmaster of Hogwarts froze just inside the door, his blue eyes – not twinkling now, the bastard – travelling slowly from face to face.

“Professor Dumbledore,” Minerva said, getting to her feet with a smile so obviously insincere that Albus actually became a little pale. “I didn’t know that you’d returned. Did you have a productive trip?”

“Exceedingly productive, yes. I apologise for interrupting, Minerva, I just wanted to alert you that I had returned.”

“Dumbledore!” Moody said cheerfully, and Minerva looked at him with both eyebrows raised. He gave her a significant look and turned back to Dumbledore, and Minerva fought the urge to smirk. Alastor was clearly up to something. “Excellent timing, old man. Minerva asked me to rally ‘round and have a little chat with these students of yours.”

“Oh?” Albus said, eyebrows going up.

“Oh indeed,” Minerva said smoothly. “He was telling young Mister Black here all about…consequences. Such interesting conversations we’ve had these past few days, Albus, I believe you’d have been thoroughly entertained.”

Albus’ face became thunderous, and Minerva shifted smoothly to put herself between him and young Severus, who was pale-faced and clearly terrified.

“Severus, I believe Miss Granger is tired,” Minerva said. “Will you and Lily take her to her room, please? It seems that the Headmaster and I have some things to discuss.”


	8. Resurgam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM ALIVE!
> 
> I'm sorry. I realise that it's been more than a year since I last posted on this fic. Probably nobody is even reading anymore, and I'm really sorry for the (long long long) delay, but life has been a bit meh lately, so...
> 
> Anyway, here's a new chapter for you! I'll try to do better about regular updates!

Severus Snape woke up. This surprised him, and for a few moments he was at a loss to remember _why_ he should be surprised. He’d woken up every morning for thirty-eight years, after all, give or take the occasional all-nighter and periods of prolonged unconsciousness. Waking up was not surprising. Except in a purely existential sense where he generally felt a combination of surprise and dismay at having survived another day.

All became somewhat more clear he suddenly recalled, with daylight clarity, the fall of Potter, the deaths of everyone in the Order and finally, laughing like a madman as Fiendfyre consumed the office of the Headmaster of Hogwarts. And probably the rest of the school too, unless someone was able to contain it, which he rather doubted. Of those who could control Fyre, one was definitely dead, one was almost certainly dead, and the third was Severus himself. Who was _supposed_ to be dead.

If he was a ghost, Severus thought as he worked at trying to figure out how to open his eyes, he was going to be _very upset_.

As it turned out, he couldn’t open his eyes. Possibly they were already open. He couldn’t really tell. He _thought_ that the perception of grey-white nothingness surrounding him might have been vision, but he couldn’t really be sure, which annoyed him.

“Hello?” he called, or thought he called, since he couldn’t feel his mouth or his throat, and wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was breathing.

A moment later there was the appearance of movement in the grey nothingness around him, and suddenly a room faded into existence around him. A _library_. It looked vaguely familiar, like a room glimpsed in a picture years ago.

Severus became aware that he had a body – or something approximating a body, at least. No sensation, no heat or cold and when he reached out to touch the table next to him he felt not a thing. But when he looked down he could see himself, so there was _something_ at least. He wasn’t just a disembodied consciousness, which was a bit of a relief anyway. He’d have preferred slightly less nudity in the arrangement, but one couldn’t have everything. Currently, he had a body with all bits attached (the nudity made checking that easy, so there was a silver lining right there) and he didn’t appear to be under direct threat. It was a start.

Movement caught his eye and he turned to the window, only to jump back with a startled yelp when he saw the entire thing taken up by a close-up of Moody’s face. A hurried sequence of events ended with him standing behind a high-backed chair. All pertinent bits now hidden, he stared at Moody, who appeared to be looking in through the window. But how…Moody was dead, wasn’t he? Or…Severus’ racing thoughts calmed as he noticed the scrolling pictures superimposed over Moody’s gigantic face. They moved too quickly for Severus to really recognize them, but he thought…as they passed, it was as though his memory, hazy and not-too-specific up to that moment, began to become more and more clear. And the longer the pictures scrolled, the more _present_ Severus found himself, until he suddenly realised that he could actually _feel_ the table under his hand.

What… _oh_.

He’d given the Granger girl his memories. Dumped them in her head, the whole bloody lot of them, and now she was showing them to Moody which, well, Severus was dead so he suspected that any objections he might have had to the idea were supremely irrelevant. But the process of showing the memories was making something happen to _him_ , whoever he was. He wasn’t Severus Snape, because Severus Snape had died in a blaze of FiendFyre. But could he be a version of the man? A copy, if you will? A copy housed in Hermione Granger’s mind palace. Now that he looked around he could see that this was it, this was the place he had barely glimpsed as he’d rushed to shove his memories into Granger’s head. And now here he was, in her mind. Severus couldn’t even begin to imagine the consequences of having two consciousnesses occupying the same brain. Insanity was probably the least of it, but if he was actually _alive_ , and he rather thought he might be, his presence might actually kill the girl. The magical power it took to create and sustain a construct with the level of complexity he was exhibiting – and Severus didn’t think he was flattering himself when he said that he was very complex indeed – was bad enough, but to sustain another _living being_ purely by the power of her magic?

He needed to think. He needed…he needed to sit down. The thought had barely formed when a chair appeared behind him, nudging into the back of his knees until he collapsed onto the seat.

The windows went black, and when they opened again Moody was gone and a variety of people moved in and out of view. McGonagall, looking years younger and fiercely angry. Potter and Black and Lupin, looking concerned, and…

Severus lurched to his feet and staggered to the window, staring at the redheaded girl who had swung into view.

_Lily_. Lily, alive and beautiful as she had been when they were friends, smiling at the window as she spoke – she was smiling at Granger, he suddenly realised, and he was seeing the world through her eyes.

Severus stood stock still, staring at Lily, so focused that he didn’t even notice when the door of the room on the other side opened to admit Albus Dumbledore.

He did notice, however, when the view through the window gave a sickening lurch, and then the view swung and he was looking at…

Severus Snape, as he had been seventeen years ago. Spotty and a bit oily about the hair, somewhat overendowed in the nose department – and other departments as well, if one wanted to be crude; Potter had had a nasty surprise once he’d gotten Severus’ pants off that fateful day – and a bit of a berk. He was smiling at Granger as they walked along – from the way her vision tended to lurch Severus was sure she wasn’t entirely steady on her feet, and from the looks of things she was probably leaning heavily on Lily and the young Severus. They passed through a door and into a bedroom, and Severus watched as the vision swung round to focus on the canopy of a four-poster bed.

It was probably time to alert Granger to his presence, if only to find out if communicating with her was even possible if she wasn’t actually in her mind palace. Being able to hear what went on outside the confines of her mind would probably also be useful.

What to do? He could send a Patronus and see if that…

Severus snorted at his own stupidity. _Simplest solution first, dunderhead_ , he told himself. And with that, he raised his head and began to call Granger’s name.

The windows turned to face young Severus, who shook his head vigorously. So she could hear him, then. Excellent. It was a start, anyway.

He was about to call out and tell her where he was when she appeared in front of him, looking around curiously.

He knew immediately when she spotted him, because she suddenly squeaked, clapped her hands over her eyes and turned away.

“Professor?” she said hesitantly. “Is that you? Have I gone ‘round the twist, then?”

“Miss Granger, asking the entity you suspect of being a hallucination about the state of your sanity does not speak well of your intelligence. However, as far as I can ascertain, I do appear to be, for want of a better world, _alive_.”

“In my brain,” she said.

“In your brain, yes,” Severus said.

“That’s great!” the girl cried cheerfully, but Severus did note that she still hadn’t turned to look at him. “Only, d’you think maybe you could put some clothes on?”

Severus glanced down, and felt the blush begin to overtake his face. Had he really forgotten that he was _naked_? Yes. Yes, he’d apparently done just that. And given Miss Granger an eyeful, if the way she was blushing was any indication.

“Bugger,” he said, and went to stand on the other side of a chair.


End file.
